Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton’s campaign released a TV ad that should give pause to anyone hoping to avoid foreign policy catastrophe in coming years. As part of her ongoing effort to court disaffected Republicans, independents and assorted apolitical centrist types, the ad featured a number of purported experts solemnly attesting to the unreliability and volatility of Donald Trump.
Among these characters was Max Boot. One of the chief intellectual architects of the Iraq War, Boot has emerged from richly earned ignominy and ostracization to enjoy a sudden career revival, in large part thanks to liberals eagerly touting his Trump-bashing op-eds and media appearances. The logic behind lavishing Boot with such effusive praise, these Dems presumably reckon, is to show that hostility to the wildman GOP nominee crosses party lines.
Bashing Trump may well be a worthwhile exercise, but what gives George W. Bush-era ideologues such as Boot — who helped orchestrate the most cataclysmic military intervention in decades — any credibility to level the charges? If anything, criticism from this set should make voters less confident in the disreputability of Trump. It’s valid to suppose that Trump presents unforeseen dangers to the republic, but to bolster this point, why highlight the fact that the most destructive operators of the past 15 years are so vehemently against him? It doesn’t make a ton of sense.
Clinton’s campaign may perceive some short-term advantage in brandishing these dubious endorsements, but the long-term ramifications are potentially dire. By rehabilitating the likes of Boot, Democrats effectively invite such people back into the fray of respectable discourse. They are once again seen as neutral, duly-credentialed “experts” whose intonations are worth dutifully listening to. By association, Hillary’s tacit approval allows these neoconservatives to accrue renewed prestige and eventually insinuate themselves back into positions of power.
Liberals likewise have taken to feverishly sharing blusterous anti-Trump columns written by Robert Kagan, another agitator for the Iraq invasion. It wasn’t so long ago that these very same liberals would have regarded men like Kagan and Boot as pariahs — intolerable scoundrels who put the country on the path to war under false pretenses.
Kagan has hosted official fundraisers for Hillary, extolling her foreign policy acumen and predilection for deploying military power abroad. His wife, Victoria Nuland, is seen as a contender for a top administration job — perhaps even secretary of state. This all unfolds while the country Kagan lobbied to invade remains gripped by horrendous turmoil and bloodshed.
Couple the newfound exaltation of neoconservatives with Democrats’ recent campaign strategy, and you’ve got a recipe for conflagration should Hillary win in November. “Just asking questions” about his ties to Russia, Clinton functionaries have repeatedly propagated bogus innuendos and often outright smears about Trump’s supposed collusion with leader Vladimir Putin.
Although his business dealings with sketchy Moscow oligarchs warrant scrutiny, the notion that Trump is some kind of secret agent of the Kremlin is preposterous, and harkens back to the old days when McCarthyite slurs were regularly heaped on anyone who dared deviate from foreign policy orthodoxy.
