Max (“the Jackboot”) Boot tells Republicans to shut up about Libya

On June 7, reader DE wrote:

The “neo commies” are a despicable lot.

“Qaddafi will fall; it’s only a matter of time. Washington Republicans would be well advised not to try to come to this discredited tyrant’s rescue. Instead they should push the Obama administration to ensure that there is a good plan in place for the post-Qaddafi phase when it will be imperative to dispatch a substantial international stabilization force to avoid the kind of disasters that occurred in post-2003 Iraq.”

I want nothing to do with this sickness.

The reader had not provided the author’s name or a link, so I googled some of the text.

As soon as I saw the article was from Commentary, but before I saw who the author was, I said to myself, based on the bullying tone of the passage I had already seen: “Max Boot!” Sure enough, I was right.

Also, DE’s phrase, “neo-commies,” is not bad.

Only a Matter of Time Before Qaddafi Falls
Max Boot 06.07.2011—8:35 PM

House Republicans who voted to stop the war in Libya right away—87 of them supported a resolution by isolationist, ultra-left-wing Rep. Dennis Kucinich last week—could not be more out of step with developments on the ground. They seem to think that the war in Libya is a quagmire and that they will derive political advantage from denouncing it. Wrong. The New York Times’s ace war correspondent John Burns reports from Tripoli that the Qaddafi regime is clearing teetering on the brink of disaster:

The Libyan government has a growing record of improbable statements and carefully manipulated news events, but four months into the conflict here, it is showing signs of desperation and disorganization. The loyalist locker seems increasingly bare.

With Colonel Qaddafi effectively a fugitive in his own capital; with Libyan rebels making important gains in recent days in the western mountains; with growing food shortages; and with an urban underground in Tripoli capable of mounting mass protests that the government can suppress only with deadly fire, the government now seems to be relying ever more heavily on its propaganda machine.

But Qaddafi can’t even spread propaganda effectively. His minions are reducing to making improbable claims of NATO brutalities that leave Western reporters amused, not impressed.

Qaddafi will fall; it’s only a matter of time. Washington Republicans would be well advised not to try to come to this discredited tyrant’s rescue. Instead they should push the Obama administration to ensure that there is a good plan in place for the post-Qaddafi phase when it will be imperative to dispatch a substantial international stabilization force to avoid the kind of disasters that occurred in post-2003 Iraq.

[end of Boot blog entry]

Notice how Boot assumes that the only thing needed to justify America’s act of intervention in Libya is that Kaddafi be defeated/killed. As though the rightness of the act, the legality of the act, the constitutionality of the act, the question whether the act advances our interests or harms them, the question whether we have anything to gain from deposing Kaddafi and becoming responsible for running his country for the next ten years (or fifty years?), are all irrelevant. All that matters is that Kaddafi be deposed/killed.

In other words, all that is necessary to justify an act of power is that it succeed.

I have been saying for over a decade that the neoconservatives have stopped believing in anything except power. Boot’s comments make that clearer than ever. For all intents and purposes, the fascistic, anti-intellectual pop slogan, “Just Do It,” is now the slogan of the neoconservatives.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 20, 2011 01:39 PM | Send