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Good lord, what an incredibly dangerous situation!
If Hersh is right, Washington has fallen into the very worst sort of trap: a profound belief in its own bullshit.
It's one thing to cynically work to suppress Hezbollah for rational (if morally bankrupt), geopolitical reasons. It's quite another thing indeed to really believe that a small Lebanese group - quite effective on its own soil, yes, but no globe straddling threat - is intent on waging war on America.
Or to put it another way: if your neighbor's an asshole who routinely does asshole things - but fully alert to the reality of how wrong he is - that's a problem but probably manageable. If, however, he takes things an order of magnitude further - doing his assholery because his addled mind thinks it's necessary self defense, a sort of pre-asshole putsch intended to derail you (evidence be damned) - then you're dealing with a troubling mental illness.
Such situations almost always end with spectacular awfulness.
Given a forced choice between say, Nero and Augustus I'd choose Augustus any day. At least he knew he was a bastard.
.d.