Das Boot
Max Boot’s rebrand falls short.
Max Boot wants us to know that he is a “neocon no more.” In a long essay for Foreign Affairs, ostensibly the nation’s premier international relations publication and the flagship journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, Boot rebrands himself after a quarter century of promoting chaos. Opposed to the “realpolitik approach of such Republicans as President Dwight Eisenhower, President Richard Nixon, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,” Boot writes that he was a supporter of a “conservatism” that privileged promoting democracy and human rights abroad at the forefront of an American foreign policy. “Having lived in a communist dictatorship, I supported the United States spreading freedom abroad. That, in turn, led me to become a strong supporter of military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Boot is penitent. “Regime change obviously did not work out as intended. In fact, the occupations of Afghanistan & Iraq were fiascos that incurred a high cost in blood and…
