Max Boot has written another “what happened to conservatism?” book, similar but superior to Charles How the Right Lost its Mind Sykes and Rick Everything Trump Touches Dies Wilson, because Boot, unlike both Sykes and Wilson, is willing to re-examine the historical record and discover, among other things, that, yes, the young William F. Buckley was a racist,1 and that, yes, Ronald Reagan did make unashamedly racist appeals while running for office.
The heart of Boot’s book, The Corrosion of Conservatism, is his complete detailing of the utter dismay he felt as he watched the “virtuous” Republican stalwarts he admired and often worked for topple like dominoes after their first inhalation of Trump’s fœtid breath (and repeated primary wins), eagerly embracing the monster they had denounced months, or even only weeks, before. Once an eager member of an army of millions, Boot now found himself almost entirely alone.
As I say, Boot had the nerve to confront the historical record and in doing so discovered not a few warts and wens on the faces of his heroes. So kudos to that, but everyone needs a little help, right? Here are a few warts and wens that Max missed, including a few that adorn his own physiognomy.
Perhaps largest of all is the man who gave Boot his first, extraordinary break, one of my least favorite people, Robert L. Bartley, editorial page editor for the Wall Street Journal for decades, and one of the worst right-wing plug-uglies ever to draw breath, who hired Boot in 1994 as assistant op-ed editor at the ripe old age of twenty-four.
Boot in fact gives a nice illustration of Bartley’s invincible, ongoing mendacity almost without meaning to, remarking on the endless “Whitewater” editorials Bartley turned out to vilify Bill and Hillary
Bartley’s obsession in the 1990s was “Whitewater”, a catchall phrase for alleged wrongdoing by the Clintons. We ran rando and rando on this subject; one of them (“Who Was Vince Foster?”) was even blamed for contributing to the suicide of a White House lawyer who had been a Hillary Clinton law partner in Little Rock. Phrases such as “Rose law firm” and “Mena airport” constantly cropped up … The evidence of Clinton misconduct was hardly conclusive, and the editorials were so carefully lawyered that it was hard for me to figure out just what they were supposed to have done wrong. I still can’t say, for example, what the connection was supposed to be between Governor Clinton and Mena Airport. But Bartley was so proud of his work that he published six volumes of Whitewater editorials as stand alone books.
Boot goes on to acknowledge that “these editorials could be seen as contributing to the growing tendency in American life not just to disagree with one’s opponents but also to try to annihilate them”, but to my mind that’s not exactly le mot juste. Six volumes of utterly mendacious political venom from one of the leading newspapers in the country? Six volumes, not of policy disagreements, but politically motivated lies, pure and simple? Boot, it’s fair to say, was no Bartley, but he never seemed to notice that he was working for one of the most unscrupulous men in the country.
Averting one’s eyes from the faults of one’s mentor is one of the most common, if not one of the most forgivable, sins in Acelaland, and Boot, to his credit, acknowledges a few of his own, most notably perhaps a monstrous howler that he enunciated soon after 9-11, making him (unfortunately) one of the first of the neocons2 to boost the notion of a new British Empire, writing that “Afghanistan and other troubled lands cry out for the sort of enlightened administration once provided by self-confident Englishman in jodhpurs and pith helmets”.
Sadly, Boot still doesn’t realize how thoroughly stupid that sentence is. He knows that, somehow, he went “too far”, but first of all he still wants to pretend that “nation-building” is a good idea, although it’s proved disastrous in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya (and it didn’t work nearly as well in Kosovo as he wants to believe3). That’s certainly bad enough–in fact, it’s terrible–but he clearly doesn’t realize the profound awfulness of the part about “self-confident Englishmen”, as though, all around the globe in these “troubled lands” the “natives” are crying out for “self-confident” (that is to say, “white”) leadership. Boot should try talking to a few “natives” before he starts cranking out the obscenely racist generalizations.4
So Mr. Boot remains an interventionist, which is bad enough, but he’s also a liar, which is worse. In a passage regarding President Obama, Boot says “But he swung too far in the other direction [from President Bush], by pulling US troops out of Iraq and refusing to intervene in the Syrian civil war. The result would be the rise of ISIS and the creation, in Syria, of what General Petraeus would call a “geopolitical Chernobyl” spewing its toxins across the region and the world.”
Boot, he if wants to be taken for an honest man, should acknowledge that it was George Bush who took us out of Iraq, signing the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement that required the removal of U.S. troops by 2011. The U.S. was in fact forced to sign this agreement thanks to pressure from the Iraqi government. As the New York Times reported at the time of the signing of the draft of the agreement,
Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government demanded a withdrawal timetable as the price of legalizing the American military presence in the country after the expiration of the United Nations mandate at the end of this year. Security gains in recent months also made the prospect of a winding down of military operations more palatable to the White House and top military officials, said people involved in the talks.
It’s almost as if the “natives” announced that they wanted the “self-confident” Englishmen (and Blackwater mercenaries/murderers) gone from their country, bag and baggage, jodhpurs, pith helmets, and all!
Boot could have argued that Obama could have kept more troops in Iraq if he had really pushed the Iraqis (though he probably couldn’t have). But he doesn’t do that. He could also acknowledge that it was Bush’s invasion of Iraq, far more than anything Obama did or didn’t do, that caused the “rise of ISIS” and the continuing crisis of Islamic extremism. And he could also acknowledge that he has no of way of knowing that U.S. intervention in Syria would not have proved to be just as disastrous as our other interventions, if not more so, because of Syria’s close links with Russia. But he doesn’t do that either. He just casts a few gratuitous innuendoes and goes about his merry way.
Despite his honest disgust with Trump, and his utter disgust with the way the Republican Party has sold out to him,5 Boot remains a blind interventionist. Interventionism always works, even though it never has. The way is always forward. Self-confidence is everything, experience is nothing.
- As I demonstrate in the link, Willie F. never reformed quite as thoroughly as Max would like to believe. ↩︎
- Boot doesn’t care for the term, even though the neocons dubbed themselves, because he feels it has anti-Semitic overtones. Part of the problem is that many of the “original” neocons, who were not Jewish, like George Will, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Peggy Noonan, began to lose enthusiasm for George Bush’s interventionist presidency, while Jewish neocons largely did not, continuing to clamor for aggressive policies that dovetailed with the policies of Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu with almost preternatural exactness. ↩︎
- The U.S. did not engage in anything resembling “nation building” in in Kosovo in the first place. Our “policy” there is popular in retrospect precisely because we had so little involvement, as Boot well knows if he knows anything about Kosovo at all, which he quite possibly does not. ↩︎
- He should also learn the difference between “English” and “British”. The Empire was a haven for ambitious Scots (and, probably, not a few Welsh) happy to get away from English condescension, snickers, and sneers. ↩︎
- Naturally, Boot wants to believe that there are a few virtuous Republicans. But there aren’t any. ↩︎
