In the course of researching another piece, I just came across a posting at redstate.com, about Seymour Hersh’s detailed New Yorker article on the administration’s major strategic shift toward supporting a range of Sunni factions, including extremist groups, in the volatile, unpredictable tangle of Middle East geopolitics. “Don’t bother reading the article. It really isn’t worth the time. But look for covert actions in the Long War [against Iran] to be the new line of attack by the Democrats on the Administration.”

The author’s post falsely implies that Hersh’s piece is strictly about covert operations within Iran, and strictly a puff piece about CIA dissent, when in fact it’s a broad regional survey of strategic questions of massive complexity and considerable controversy within the administration itself; it’s also another example of policy’s being formulated and approved in an insular corner of the executive branch. This response reveals something worse than a measure of dishonesty, or poor reading comprehension -- even the subhead ("Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?") should have alerted the blogger to the fact that the issues raised transcend the concerns of Iran doves. Rather, it also reveals a gross anti-intellectualism. The fact that Hersh is the author was enough to discredit the article and to recommend that others dismiss it sight unseen, and remaining willfully ignorant of the issues involved. The echo chamber of comments to the post are no more encouraging.

I admit the Hersh article is long. But it’s written in a reportorial style, draws on many sources, and is not marred by the polemical tone of, say, the redstate.com dismissal. And it’s, you know, important on the policy merits. Next time anyone complains to you that the left’s distrust of the administration is an arbitrary emotional reaction heedless of the administration’s good-faith efforts to secure the nation, you should first cite this article and other good journalism on the administration. Then, consider whether the accuser has projected his or her own proclivities for blind ideological mistrust onto you.

Note: Obviously some hawkish writers are more dedicated than streiff, the writer cited here, to becoming knowledgeable about the dangers and complexities of the aggressive foreign policies they espouse. But the presumptive hostility to an independent press examination of government assertions and actions appears widespread on the hawkish right.