More Seriousness

One key example of the mainstreaming of crackpottery that I mentioned earlier is things like the Max Boot. Here he is with a column explaining that George W. Bush's endorsement of goofy revisionist accounts of Vietnam was "a skillful bit of political jujitsu." He holds a variety of other crackpot views and has for years. His latest piece is in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, which are well-known venues for crackpottery and factually inaccurate claims. And, indeed, it was as a Wall Street Journal editorialist that he got his start.

Meanwhile, he's now also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

That hardly means every other fellow at the CFR -- much less every "member" -- is a bad person with dumb ideas, but you can see why this sort of thing leads liberals to not have such warm feelings about the Council, especially when you consider that Boot tends to (undeservedly) have a much higher media than do worthier CFR types like Ray Takeyh.

Comments

Ray Takeyh had a great article about Libya reorienting its foreign policy in Foreign Affairs sometime in 2000 or '01, before 9/11. It was very convincing on Qadaffi's turn away from terrorism and pan-Arabism to pan-Africanism, as a result of sanctions and the ineffectiveness of his previous policy.

Of course, after the invasion of Iraq, it was fashionable in some circles to attribute Qadaffi's changed policy to our awesomeness and tough resolve by invading a country. Not true.

Because he had no discernible ideological bias at all, and confined his analysis entirely to what was actually happening in the real world, Takeyh has had no place in the WSJ, or in policymaking over the past 6 years.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | August 24, 2007 4:50 PM

Amazing mendacity on the part of both Bush and Max Boot. Following the link we get this from Boot:

President George W. Bush boldly abandoned that template with his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday. In a skillful bit of political jujitsu, he cited Vietnam not as evidence that the Iraq War is unwinnable, but to argue that the costs of giving up the fight would be catastrophic -- just as they were in Southeast Asia.

Bush was bold alright. Boldly rewriting history. The costs of giving up the fight in Southeast Asia were not catastrophic! Not for us and not for the Vietnamese. Yes, specific Vietnamese died after our pullout that might have lived had we stayed. But others lived that would have otherwise died. Thousands of North Vietnamese certainly lived who would have otherwise have perished under our policy of "carpet bombing" their cities and industry. We were literally slaughtering Vietnamese by the thousands with our ordnance. The stat is almost cliched it's used so often but the fact is we dropped more bombs in the Vietnam war than we did in all of World War Two.

A report from UC Berkely states .. the U.S. Air Force dropped 6.1 million tons of bombs and other ordnance in Indochina from 1964 to 1975, while the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps contributed another 1.5 million bombs.

That compares to 2.1 million tons of munitions during World War II, and 454,000 in the Korean War, they said.

Estimates of Vietnamese dead that I can find all indicate that more than a million civilians died and more than a million soldiers also died. Millions! U.S. dead is put at nearly 60,000.

Do they think America can be taken in by this nonsense because enough of us don't remember the carnage we were wreaking on the Vietnamese people? Do they think there's not a collective memory of the masses of U.S. military that also died?

Contrary to the lies of President Bush and his various mouthpieces when the Vietnam war concluded both the United States and Vietnam started healing. Things got better here and they got better there with the conclusion of the Vietnam war. Trying to argue otherwise is just obscene.

"Crackpottery" hardly does this bit of propaganda justice although it nicely captures the credence it should be given.
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Posted by Curt M | August 24, 2007 5:05 PM

Thank you Curt M!

One characteristic the keep 'the war going in Iraq' argument shares with 'the we should have kept the war going in Vietnam' argument is the way in which the wars themselves seem to keep attracting new and ever shifting rationales as war supporters refuse to admit that the falsity of the original rationale, of several subsequent revisions of it, of the original claim about the costs and upward revisions of it, shows that they were wrong in any particular. Anyone who is old enough to remember, or knows the history of the period, should shudder at the revisionist argument that comes down to 'the light really was around the next bend in the tunnel'. And all of these arguments, as you acutely note, silently omit to count the cost in death and destruction that our way of war was inflicting on the population of Indochina and how it would have risen if we'd followed their advice.

Posted by J | August 24, 2007 5:29 PM

P.S. We should also view with considerable suspicion an argument that takes the form: 'funny thing, contrary to received wisdom, the decline in public trust experienced by the govt in the Johnson and Nixon years was wholly unjustified; then as now we should repose absolute and total faith in our betters be they in govt, think tanks or the media'.

Posted by J | August 24, 2007 5:43 PM

These people at the CFR, etc. are an amazing breed. If you ever read Ali Allawi's book on the Iraq War, there is a section in which he talks about these mandarins that roam the netherworld between academia and government. They, and the media, dub themselves intellectuals but they definately do not fit the criteria.

It seems to me the largest case of group-think ever recorded. There are no real fundamental differences in approaches to American foreign policy between CFR and National Review. Where there are differences is on the margins. National Review and the Weekly Standard havce their pet projects: Iraq, Iran, Israel, etc. But where's gap between them and CFR? CFR supported the invasion, but like many became critical afterwards. It wasn't said in so many words, but I can almost hear them echoing Michael Rubin and Adelman: my Iraq war idea was sublime, but the Bush Adminstration screwed it all up. CFR is after Iran's hide, too: it's just that the air strikes will have to wait. And Israel, well, it's just a matter of turning down the volume a tad.

I'm not a Chomskyist, but I think his analysis of the press is equally applicable to our imperial establishment in American government and society. The edifice can take some criticism and survive. In fact, the critcism is necessary for the public relations effect of learning from mistakes, etc. But if it were to really have a microscope taken to it, its ideas, its interests, and its values, would it survive? Likely not. It will never reform itself meaningfully, and the press is not willing to challenge the really core ideas and interests that drive it. And, of course, economic plenty and political apathy leave the majority of the population uncaring and/or unaware of its problems.

Posted by Brandon R | August 24, 2007 5:53 PM

Best Boot quote ever (which I came upon just after finishing The Great Game):

"Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets."

Posted by SAO | August 24, 2007 6:19 PM

SAO: someone should deliver a pair of jodhpurs and a pith helmet to Boot's office, with the note: 'off you go, then'.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | August 24, 2007 6:44 PM

Boot gets a credential from having a book -- War Made New: Weapons, Warriors and the Making of the Modern World -- but the subtext of that book is essentially Why George Bush Couldn't Have Foreseen the Shambles in Iraq Even With All the History He's Read.

Posted by P O'Neill | August 24, 2007 6:59 PM

I've always been mystified that Max Boot's rise to stardom hasn't been impeded by the rather obvious fact he's an imperialist cum fascist crank. Emphasis on imperialist and fascist, and double emphasis on crank.

Every single bit offal offered from said crank reads like Ayn Rand, except Rand's crazy utopia of free markets run by Napoleons is replaced by a crazier utopia of ruthlessly crushing everyone guilty of insufficient grovelling to US interests (which may or may not include spreading democracy; its hard to tell). He seems to just be in love with war.

Probably got his ass kicked at recess a lot. Some folks buy guns and go on a killing spree, others write books and become 'intellectual' spokesmen.

Perhaps this is part & parcel of some sort of necessary dynamic per social evolutions: Germany led the world in intellectual & technological advances and look what happened. Also see: Roman Empire.

Ramblefest done.

Posted by Monty | August 24, 2007 7:33 PM

See also:

Hubris.

Posted by Monty | August 24, 2007 7:38 PM

Boot was a year ahead of me at Cal. I was at his graduation ceremony for the history department at the Greek Theater to see a friend of mine graduate. The students booed when Boot's name was called. (And no, they were not just chanting "Boooooot.")

You see, Boot was known primarily around campus for his slot as the Daily Cal's token conservative writer. My personal favorite was his column on homosexuality. He argued that homosexuality was wrong because if everyone did it, the human race would die out.

It's an interesting twist on Kant's moral imperative: an act is immoral if, when it is done univerally to the exclusion of everything else, it leads to bad results. Of course, by this logic, being a basketball player is bad because if everyone played basketball there would be no farmers and we'd all starve to death.

It's good to see that he's still douchetarding away.

Go Bears!

Posted by mxh | August 24, 2007 7:43 PM

Matt, you're actually doing a really important thing in calling this crowd out so clearly -- refusing to respect them. Keep it up. It's going to take a lot of repetition to get the message out. I suggest a regular "Crackpot Watch".

In a small way, you're being courageous too -- being clear about the corruption and craziness in the DC foreign policy establishment is probably not an aid to "mainstream" success.

Posted by mq | August 24, 2007 8:04 PM

Actually, let's get a little more specific on the nature of his dottiness. He also announces that:

(1) LBJ's key mistake was not invading and occupying large parts of Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam immediately.

(2) Bush should immediately attack both Syria and Iran.

(3) We should try to set up Maliki as a dictatorial strongman (which is what we should also have done with Ngo Dinh Diem).

(4) The US Army has to destroy most of the Iraqi "militias" militarily itself before there will be even the slightest chance of reaching a political settlement in Iraq. (Presumably he means the Sunni militias, not the Shiite militias. Of course, knowing Boot, it could easily be both -- with our current number of troops. Alternatively, he may just be saying that we should set up a Shiite dictatorship in Iraq and then use it as a base from which to attack Iran.)

Posted by bruce Moomaw | August 24, 2007 8:24 PM

The fact that someone whose basic premise is "American might to promote American ideals" can be taken at all seriously is a reflection of the degraded state of our political culture.

Posted by Geaghan | August 25, 2007 4:33 AM

Boot's column in the WSJ drawing more parallels between todays left and the surrender of our forces in Vietnam was excellent

Matt simply calls him a crackpot, since Matt is too lazy (or unable) to challenge his points

(And yes, Afghanistan, India and many other places would be and were far better off, relative to the times and perhaps even now, under the British than now)

Posted by Jozef | August 25, 2007 8:23 AM

I assume that Mr. Yglesias will comment sometime today on Michael O'Hanlons' oped in todays Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082401645.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR

Posted by SLC | August 25, 2007 8:43 AM

(And yes, Afghanistan, India and many other places would be and were far better off, relative to the times and perhaps even now, under the British than now)

Posted by Jozef | August 25, 2007 8:23 AM

Okay, maybe, then relative to the times and perhaps even now, the USA would be better off under the British than now.

I doubt it, just like almost no one outside of weird fantasy try to apply that in any actual depth to Britain's decaying hold over its last colonies.

Or perhaps Afghanistan, India, and many other places would have been *even better off* if there had been, like, some super-awesome extra-terrestrial civilization that came down and actually developed them for a vibrant independent nationhood and economy.

But that didn't happen either.

It's even more likely that Afghanistan would have been better off if the liberal hawks and crazy Reaganites hadn't created a proxy war against its secular government by Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists, drug runners, and warlord thugs to turn it into a warlord chaos hell.

Unfortunately that *did* happen.

Posted by El Cid | August 25, 2007 8:43 AM