I just saw this post on Think Progress that highlights more pronouncements from Weekly Standard honcho, Fox News hired blowhard and PNAC nincompoop Bill Kristol concerning how the people of Iran will greet us when we bomb the shit out of their country hoping to hit something important in the process.

The comments about the outcome of “regime change” in Iraq that we heard just prior to and during the initial invasion from people like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, et al as well as Kristol himself saying how we’d be welcomed by the Iraqi people grateful for us having rid them of their horrible dictator turned out to be, shall we say, less than prescient. It seemed those damned ungrateful Iraqi people not only hated Saddam they actually loved their country and did not take kindly to all those tank tracks and craters we kept leaving all over it as well as the unsightly litter of dead Iraqis clogging up the streets. So they did what all people do when the country they love and live in is invaded by outsiders bent on plundering it, they fought back, and continue to fight back even as we’ve turned their country into a haven for sectarian viciousness not seen during Saddam’s reign, as bad as that was.

So now, fresh with this new perspective on the impact of nationalism on gratitude for forced regime change this crowd is now singing a new tune about the potential outcome of an invasion of Iran:

the Iranian people dislike their regime. I think they would be – the right use of targeted military force — but especially if political pressure before we use military force – could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power.

OK, so it sounds exactly like the old tune. Hmmm, these idiots really don’t understand this stuff all that well. They think if we lob some cruise missiles (after having practiced “diplomacy” which, if it is anything like the runup to Iraq, will consist of “do what we want or the kid gets it”) drop some smart bombs which apparently still need remedial education to really hit what they are aimed at, and destroy some strategic targets we can’t really identify with certainty (they might be elementary schools but, oh well), that the first response from these people, whose entire history in the region dwarfs the history of our nation to the point of insignificance, will be “oh goody, those kindly Americans with their bombs and missiles are shining the light of truth upon us so that we might realize how horrible our leadership really is. We shall welcome the liberators with open arms”.

Right.

It never occurs to the bushites and neocons that people who live in other countries might actually have a sense of loyalty to the nation of their birth, the nation of their entire family’s birth, their homeland if you will. No these idiots in Washington actually seem to believe that the entire world reveres America, that they would do anything to be just like us with a real gold plated whomping good democracy and a benevolent leader like Good King George, and that they simply cannot wait to be shown the error of their ways, preferably at the point of a gun. Why, nations around the world are just lining up eager to have their governments overthrown by Dear Old Uncle Sam so that they too might become just like Iraq, a beacon of democracy lighting the way in the Middle East. (and you can tell already how well that example is being emulated in Lebanon by our good friends the Israelis)

It is no wonder that Vladimer (I saw his soul) Putin felt quite at ease rhetorically bitch-slapping Junior Bush the other day in St. Petersburg. The more we behave like this the more irrelevant we become to the rest of the world and the more vulnerable we are to hostile actions on the part of others. There would be no need for missile launches from N. Korea or Russia or China, a simple calling of our loans would do it. And I hardly think the EU would rush to our defense if we keep up this foolishness because our actions threaten the entire world and the sooner we get shunted over to the sidelines the better off the world will be.

We’re in debt up to our eyeballs and our economy more and more resembles that of a third-world country, with ever more massively rich at the top, ever more working or non-working poor at the bottom and an ever shrinking middle class more likely to fall down to the bottom than ever climb to the top.

We’re falling deeper into a hole we may not soon be able to climb out of and these clowns think Iranians will be just delighted if we invade their country, and it will make everything better because it is yet another chance for them to prove to us that they really are right about everything. Because the other stuff they did to prove how right they are hasn’t, you know, really worked out all that well just yet.

[update]

A friend pointed out to me what I already knew but didn’t elaborate on in the above, that Iraq is an artificial construct of the British. True enough, but that region is also the birthplace of modern civilization and regardless of boundaries which have fluctuated for millennia many of the tribes that live there have lived there for millennia as well. The history of the region is exceedingly long and rich and the attachment of the people to the land no less intense or heartfelt because the current political boundaries are arbitrary. Yet another outside invader and conqueror coming into to remake the political landscape yet again, especially in the 21st century, is no welcome sight to the Iraqis regardless of the motivation for the invasion.