A Neocon on Mindless Unilateralism
Readers may be shocked to learn that there still are neoconservatives around who are thoughtful and make a lot of sense. But there are. And Max Boot is one of them, as he once again demonstrates with this Los Angeles Times column on mindless unilateralism. Read it. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
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Mr. Daalder, last December, when it was apparent to anyone (except apparently admirers of Das Boot), that Iraq was collapsing, that the only useful road out of Iraq was American withdrawal, you perceived "some" positive signs that prevented you from agreeing with Murtha. Now you have turned from examining Bush administration entrails to sucking up to neo-con "thinkers" "(all honorable men" I am sure). Perhaps you can put a temporary hold on your paeans to neo-con and Bush actions long enough to give us all the benefits of your academic expertise...oh swami does the future look bright for Iraqi democracy and the Iraq-US partnership? Presumably you have a position advising Biden, Lieberman, Clinton and Bayh on national security; do tell us all as well when these great leaders might start to criticize the great Iraqi adventure.
April 5, 2006 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose I should be pleasantly surprised that Max Boot is not competely indoctrinated into the jingo cult, but the very first paragraph devalued the rest. Since the rest was very easy for all reasonable people to agree on, that leaves not much to be pleased with.
Any other administration, even Reagan's, would not have stumbled into the diplomatic trap this one has built around us. That the entire Washington establishment is not joining together to laugh this bunch out of town tells us some still hope for perks or other goodies from the seat of power.
It's not just mindless unilateralism, it's just mindless (but with faith).
Max Boot is only a Master of the Obvious.
April 5, 2006 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why should we feel constrained to applaud when someone reaches such an obvious conclusion? If this is what passes for deep thinking in the foreign policy establishment, we need a new foreign policy establishment.
April 5, 2006 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't really understand how the Dubai business counts as an instance of "unilateralism." I mean, is the US really supposed to "consult with its allies" about who runs its ports? Ivo, you sometimes just astound me . . .
April 5, 2006 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I do not know if any of you have read Max Boot's "The Savage Wars of Peace", but if you had read the book you would know what a change this article is from it. It praises one unilateral military campaign after another. Not only from the perspective of the United States but from the good done for the local people.
The attacks on Ivo seem rather juvenile.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
April 5, 2006 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are there any neocons around being thoughtful and making sense about neocon policy? Oh yeh, some are slinking off and saying that maybe the neocons didn’t get it exactly right about invading Iraq but now Boot thinks it would be just dandy for anyone to bomb Iran. That seems to be the only thing in the article which has a neocon stench to it yet because he says that the U.S. is sometimes unilateral in unproductive ways he qualifies as a thoughtful guy.and he is a neocon too. Okay, I guess Ivo is right, maybe, but I‘m going to have to think about it.
April 5, 2006 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, please...
There ARE NO neocons who make sense. And when they do, they're conning you in order to sucker you into another lie they're planning.
As this ridiculous article demonstrates...
I can show you passages from L. Ron Hubbard's crap where he makes sense. He still started Scientology, aborted his wife with a coat hanger in a hotel room, and did assorterd other insanities.
Hell, I can even cite you myself at various times...
Richard Steven Hack
www.computerproblemssolvedcheap.com
April 5, 2006 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is there any wonder the Dems are so pathetic in terms of national security...there is always an Ivo to advise them. My God, Boot who has been a pernicious asshole from before recorded time writes an article to get distance from the disasters these moronic neocons have foisted upon this country and we are to appaud loudly. What this post shows is just how bankrupt of ideas Daalder and the Democrtatic national security academic types are. Perhaps we will have another Kerry-style campaign. Should be great fun. Then we can sing songs of praise to Fukuyama and Boot and Andrew Sullivan...the mighty thinkers who try to salvage their tattered reputations after the harm is done. And there is always an Ivo to oblige.
April 5, 2006 8:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
To give Boot his due in one area, his position on the International Criminal Court is not new or surprising. That is one area in which he has differed from most of his neoconservative friends. Even while promoting Bolton for the UN last year, he opposed Bolton's hard line position on the ICC and recommended greater US cooperation with the court.
But the F-35 situation is puzzling. When the Quadrennial Defense Review came out earlier this year, Boot seemed to single out the F-35 as one of those old-fashioned big ticket items that were hogging all the defense dollars, and taking them away from his own pet spending proposal: lots and lots and lots of new troops to send all over the world - even including foreign mercenaries!
Now suddenly he likes the F-35, and thinks it should have its pick of not just one Pratt & Whitney engine, but another unnecessary and expensive Rolls Royce and GE engine - apparently all so we can share more of the wealth from our bottomless defense budget trough with our British friends. I wonder if he has since come to have a horse in this race. Is he consulting now for GE or Rolls Royce? Or is he just attempting to curry favor with the Brits in advance of the Blair visit - a vist during which the F-35 flap is sure to be high on the business agenda.
In any case, the whole F-35 matter seems more a commerical dispute than a strategic one - certainly not the sort of thing most people have in mind when they talk about "multilateralism" as opposed to "unilateralism". When liberals call for more multilateralism, I take it they don't mean simply that we should keep the foreign subsidiaries of the military-industrial complex just as happy as we keep the domestic branches.
It does seem that the neocons have made a tactical shift over the past year or so. They are apparently trying to rebuild their ties with Europe, cutting back on the "new European antisemitism" propaganda campaign, reaching out to reactionaries by stoking European nativist fears of the encroaching Muslim hordes, and trying to build a sort of Euro-neo-con movement. And having lost a lot of their domestic friends, they are perhaps seizing on an opportunity opened by the Dubai ports flap to win friends and influence people abroad. It is clever of Boot and friends to begin fronting for overseas defense contractors, many of whom are no doubt nervous that the deficit-driven US cash cow is going to dry up in a burst of "isolationism" - i.e. frugality - and who must be casting about in search of influential lobbyists.
April 5, 2006 9:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
"so we can share more of the wealth from our bottomless defense budget trough with our British friends. "
Other way round. What the US is now suggesting is that us british taxpayers should now hand over money to the US and get nothing back in return. Hmm, even a US lickspittle like blair(quack thump) can see how strangely enough thats not going to fly in the UK.
With the F-35 the UK is being asked to pay towards the development of the plane and yet not being given access to the data required to make sure that we don't have to keep shelling out to US companies to keep the things in the air.
Yeah right.
Talk over here . is that the f-35 is the last major project. After all the US is proving itself to be a undependable partner , so why should the UK get involved. Blair might disagree but he's a pathetic shell of a man these days. And the alliance with the US is an extremely bearish stock in the UK these days.
April 6, 2006 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Memo to policymakers: By all means punish our enemies. But leave our friends alone. Max Boot
Boot's column evidences no change in his position or theory. Daalder's sycophancy deserves impugning.
April 6, 2006 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Other way round. What the US is now suggesting is that us british taxpayers should now hand over money to the US and get nothing back in return. Hmm, even a US lickspittle like blair(quack thump) can see how strangely enough thats not going to fly in the UK.
Well hardly nothing in return. They're getting a plane of their liking. By investing $2 B in the program, they were given unique "Level 1 partner" status in the program, meaning they were able to partcipate in the evaluation and selection process, and had an influence over design decisions that none of the other international partners had. See this article in Navy Matters.
With the F-35 the UK is being asked to pay towards the development of the plane and yet not being given access to the data required to make sure that we don't have to keep shelling out to US companies to keep the things in the air.
Perhaps that's the issue. But I suspect the UK might also be interested in getting its hands on proprietary US stealth technology, in order to profit from it. The UK is our ally; but its defense firms are also competitors of US firms.
In any case, whichever country has the best case, my claim is that the dispute is at bottom a business dispute in the big bucks and high stakes world of defense procurement - and not, as Boot would have it, a dispute about "multilateralism" or "unilateralism" in any interesting strategic sense.
April 6, 2006 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with the Democratic party defense intellectuals and the party in general is that nobody believes they will kill for what they believe in. So democrats are left to claim how they think this or that enemy is the epitomy of evil and a threat to our very existence as the Republcans do, but then have to offer nuanced and weak looking policies to address them. We either have to kill somebody to show we're not afraid, or act like we are not afraid and that these threats have been over-hyped. Otherwise, we are left to praise the "real men" when they show some kinder and gentler side.
BTW Max Bood does not disavow unilateral war as an instrument of policy in this article, he continues to praise it and looks forward to praising our attack on Iran. I'll give him props on the ICC though, but give me a break on the Dubai ports.
I still can't get over the fact that the Democrats succumbed to the fear of claiming Sadaam was a military threat to this country. He was no threat even if the alleged WMD intelligence had been true. That's what happens when you are afraid of looking weak, honesty goes out the window. Even now with the cover of doctored and false WMD intelligence, the Dems can't summon up the balls to say "I would have done it differently if I had known."
Could an honest (regime change) case have been made for the war? I don't know. I doubt it since it would have run up against certain norms of international law. But it wasn't attempted.
April 7, 2006 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
For the record, on this blog, Ivo praises the thoughtfulness of a man who has called Bill Clinton a "White Flag Democrat" !
Well done, Ivo. If that's how you protect the good name of your former boss, you might consider blogging for the freepers.
Or consider how Max Boot talks about the Dems:
"Apparently the death of about 2,100 soldiers over the course of almost three years is more than they [the Dems] can bear."
Not enough? How about this piece of wisdom from Thoughtful Max:
"Good thing these were not the same Democrats who were running the country in 1944, or else they would have pulled out of France after the loss of 5,000 Allied servicemen on D-day."
That's the man you're praising, Ivo. For you he's a thoughtful man. For me, he is a little piece of shit!
April 7, 2006 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
April 13, 2006 2:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
I tell ya what would "pleasantly surprise" me. Some hard and honest thinking from a certain tank on the Greatest Strategic Disaster in US history.
Next best - Daalder's promised post on withdrawal from Iraq. Lord knows we wouldn't want to give the insurgents the incentive to wait us out, now would we?
Hey Ivo. They've all the time in the world, in case you haven't figured that one out.
April 14, 2006 8:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
By all means punish our enemies. But leave our friends alone
Mr Daalder, do you believe that the Chirac government's behavior toward Saddam during the run-up to the war was friendly to US interests?
Do you believe it was in the interests of the US, and consistent with international law and the expressed will of the Security Council, for France's "national champion" oil company, TotalFinaElf, in Nov 2002 to sign a multi-billion dollar sweetheart deal with Saddam to develop fully one-third of Iraq's entire oil reserves?
regards,
thibaud
April 15, 2006 10:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I still can't get over the fact that the Democrats succumbed to the fear of claiming Sadaam was a military threat to this country. He was no threat even if the alleged WMD intelligence had been true.
Have you forgotten that our party unanimously supported President Clinton's policy of regime change in Iraq? That Clinton again and again asserted that Saddam was "determined to get WMD, and if he gets them I guarantee you he will use them"? Did you think that this (Democratic) regime change policy would occur without the application of military force?
Are you amnesiac, or just bullshitting us, and yourself? Either way, that so many party activists act like you is a good and sufficient reason for Americans to continue not to trust our party on foreign affairs.
April 15, 2006 10:55 PM | Reply | Permalink