So say we, so say we all. It is indeed a puzzle the way the same people who get misty every time they see Old Glory run up the pole are completely ignorant that people in a faraway land feel something similar when they see their country's flag break to the breeze.

However, it isn't so much nationalism as a sense of entitlement to meddle in the affairs of others that is driving this, mixed with a healthy dose of everything-Obama-does-is-wrong. True nationalists feel that the United States should step in only when it's clear that it would actually help. What's more likely to happen in the present case would be that it might touch off violence - which is A-OK with those who would love to see America initiate a war with Iran anyway.

My off -the- wall theory is that right wing lizard brains operate in a single dimension, how to get power and hold on to it. Most of the largely hypocritical stances they take are simply knee jerk reactions to oppose whatever the liberal stance is on a particular issue.

This knee jerk side-taking in opposition to Obama and liberals concerning the travails of other countries seems to be more prominent lately, and increasingly irrational, maybe because so many Americans don't trust the RW domestic agendas anymore. Come to think of it, they probably don't take them all that serious on foreign affairs.

George Bush and GOP true colors in governing, killed the conservative movement, dead as a doornail.

Shorter Steve Benen: Boy, Americans sure are stupid.

Unless Steve Benen is secretly Hilzoy, Steve Benen didn't write this. However, you make a good point - thanks for falling on your sword.

I'd point out that General McCrystal is the first commander in the US neo-con-colonies to recognize that US forces might find situations they have to walk away from or, at least, treat with extreme circumspection.

Thus it has taken the US Armed Forces, supposedly trained to flexible and imaginative response, 7 years to relearn any of the lessons about being an occupying force or fighting an insurgency.

Of course the clues were there in international law. Let alone any other "power"'s experience in the last 70 years. And the actual attitude exposed when Lt.Gen. Van Riper was dismissed from the war game for disabling the Blues.

Why expect better from the drones who continue to drink the Cool-Aid?

When the media starts shooting these idiots' leaders down with just a few on point cross-examination questions (which we need both ways) they might be worth reading.

""...people who will brook no criticism of their own country..." - unless of course they are doing the criticizing/condemning

soldiers in an alien country make mistakes and kill or detain the wrong people,
Do you mean like Abu Ghraib? There, the mistake was letting most of those detained return home where they actually told other people (and NOT in English!) what went on in the prison. Clearly, the biggest mistake was letting any of them go home.
You can tell the nationalists on Fox News as often as practicable that they are wrong but it just doesn't matter.

It's been my impression that the conservative movement has a selection procedure for preferred individuals to become conservatives, and the top single criteria has to be that the individual totally lack empathy for others. anyone who starts out with elements of empathy is accepted only as a probationary conservative.

Then once a candidate to become a conservative passes the entrance selection criteria, the training and indoctrination is designed to totally eliminate any vestiges of empathy that might have slipped through the selection process.

I must say the process works amazingly efficiently. By the time someone reaches leadership and spokesman levels, any suggestion that there ever was any empathy is clearly gone. Instead they are trained to recognize enemies and determine how to destroy them. Even the Republican moderates have learned this.

notthere (2:17 AM), any media member who asks those pointed questions will be heavily attacked and to the best of the conservative's abilities (which are considerable) are professionally destroyed. The conservatives have an organized machine to do exactly that, though it is nothing that would appear on any official organization charts. It's part of the same dirty tricks tradition that created Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and many others. Some of those people focus on the media as part of their propaganda operation.

The media owners see no profit in defending and protecting those reporters, so they don't or they do so only half-heartedly. Since most reporters lack any form of tenure, they move from job to job. The fact that they they get hurt in the reputation with editors and employers is very professionally threatening.

That's the conservative way of dealing with sharp questions, and the media has learned the lesson well. They have also learned that there is no risk in asking similar questions of Democrats and the various flavors of liberal and progressive, so they happily go right in and do exactly that.

For the record, I reject the guy's use of the word "Americanists'.

The combination of xenophobia, entitlement and lack of empathy is a powerful one.

I'm not sure which is the more influential ingredient - perhaps it varies from individual to individual and/or from situation to situation?

In some unnamed instances we shouldn't discount the contribution made by sheer ignorance and stupidity.

uh, you're referring to people using America for the sake of the Israel lobby as "Americanists" - heh.

This so-called nationalism is not patriotism but narcissism, a pathological condition whose distinguishing feature is complete lack of empathy. These narcissists see promoting their own nation as promoting themselves. It's not about America at all, much less Iran.

"It is strange how nationalists often have the least awareness of the importance of the nationalism of another people."

Look, all good people everywhere understand that the United States of America is the greatest country that ever was and is a Shining City on a Hill and is God's chosen instrument for the execution of His will. So all good people everywhere especially those not fortunate enough to be Americans thirst for direction from America and approval from America and any person who doesn't is turning his face from God and is a bad and evil person and belongs to the axis of evil. So of course the good Iranians want and need American approval and if they don't well then they're bad Iranians not good ones.

Re: "... have someone else overthrow your dictator and occupy your country."
Possibly even worse that we're the same someone else who made him dictator to start.