While the investigation continues into the deadly attack on a U.S. helicopter in Afghanistan which resulted in 38 U.S. and Afghan deaths, the lack of information has led some right-wing pundits to point the finger at Iran. Last night, CNN’s John King interviewed Frances Townsend, a former Homeland Security adviser to George W. Bush, and Brad Thor, a thriller novelist.

Thor quickly jumped to the conclusion that Iran was reponsible for the attack, leading John King to interject that the site of the helicopter crash — just southwest of Kabul — was much closer to Pakistan than Iran. But that didn’t stop Townsend, taking cues from an aspiring Tom Clancy, to continue the baseless hypothesizing about Iranian involvement. Thor started off by pushing the conversation toward Iran:

THOR: The Afghan government is completely corrupt and it’s riddled with Iranian spies. [...]

KING: I’m not discounting the importance of any Iranian relationship, but this to me, based on the history and people you talk to, is a Pakistan issue, not necessarily an Iran issue, right?

TOWNSEND: That’s right John, except to Brad’s point, look, we have seen an increasing amount of Iranian involvement and support in Afghanistan. And oh, by the way, they have been spoilers inserting themselves into Afghanistan and undermining U.S. efforts. You know, the Iranians don’t always come in the front door and oftentimes they work through proxies and they insert themselves to cause Americans and American forces difficulty around the world. We saw it in Iraq, and that makes sense to everybody since that’s a neighbor, but we see it in places like Afghanistan as well.

THOR: Fran’s analysis is always spot on. It’s why I enjoy watching her so much. I’d like to add that there’s word out that whatever took down the helicopter might be known as an IRAM, an improvised, rocket assisted, mortar. We first saw this with Shiite extremists in Iraq with Iranian fingerprints all over them. And that’s why I’m so concerned. They call these things in the military “flying IEDs.” We don’t have confirmation on what brought this helicopter down but that and the fact that the Iranians have so penetrated not only the Afghan government but a lot of the indigenous support at our forward operating bases and around the country of Afghanistan makes me wonder. You know, the Taliban, they’re good but man, I don’t think they’re that good. I really think this has the fingerprints of Iranian cooperation on it.

Watch it:

A Lexis Nexis search for “Iran AND Afghanistan AND helicopter” turns up no relevant news accounts of Iranian involvement in the attack. It would seem that Thor and Townsend are currently the only pundits to subscribe to the Iranian-bogeyman theory of how the U.S. suffered its single worst day of casualties in Afghanistan. (HT: antiwar.com and Bahman Kalbasi)

Last month, a Zogby International poll conducted in conjunction with the Arab American Institute found that despite favorable attitudes toward the United States and President Obama after his election in 2008, “ratings for both the U.S. and the President have spiraled downwards” in Arab countries. Naturally, the right wing appeared delighted:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD: No doubt the Obama team is amazed, shocked, and incredulous that favorable views of the United States can possibly be lower under his enlightened leadership than they were in the awful old days of George W. Bush. [...] Part of it is that an apologetic America actually appeals to no one, for friends rely on our strength and enemies have contempt for any weakness.

COMMENTARY: The United States under President Bush was more popular in the Arab world than it is under President Obama. Now isn’t that a twist?

The Arab American Institute responded yesterday to those who “‘cherry picked’ the findings they liked, while ignoring the rest, in an effort to buttress their ideological positions” and singled out the “Bush was better” crowd:

In fact, what our history of polling in the Arab World shows, if anything, is that the policies of the Bush Administration deeply damaged the U.S. image across the Middle East. Torture, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and the devastation of Gaza and Lebanon were unforgettable policies that marked the Bush era. It was because Arabs expected that Obama would change all of this that U.S. ratings soared in 2009. But with the realization that the new President could not or would not be able to make those changes, U.S. ratings have sharply dropped. Expectations raised and then let down can be quite devastating—but nowhere is there an Arab cry to “bring back Bush”. The holes Bush dug were so deep and the damage he did was so great that the Arab World and the U.S. will be living with the consequences of his policies for a long time to come.

Part of the reason Arab attitudes about the U.S. and Obama have declined is that the expectations for the new American president, particularly after his Cairo speech, were so high. James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute and the polling firm’s senior adviser, also said after the poll’s release, “There was this sense that it’s a fundamentally broken system, that (the U.S.) can’t do the right thing.”

And as the Center for American Progress’ Matt Duss noted, “Arab opinion of the U.S. fell dramatically after the invasion and occupation of Iraq” and “[w]hile many Arabs were willing to give Obama a chance to change the U.S. orientation, they now seem to have given up.”

“When your neighbor’s been fooling around with your wife for years,” Zogby said, “you don’t suddenly change your mind about him when he takes out your garbage and trims your hedges.”