RUTHFULLY YOURS

You probably never heard of Max Boot, not that you missed much.

Like Ash Carter, Mister Boot is one of those defense intellectuals who makes a living from all things vicarious; consulting, “scholarship,” partisan journalism, political appointments, and think tank sinecures. The shorthand for the Boot stereotype in Washington is “Beltway bandit.”

Boot was born in Moscow and has served as one of Senator John McCain’s foreign policy advisors. You could do worse than think of Boot as a Russophobic wing nut. He also is a rabid advocate of regime change, global intervention, Russia-baiting, small wars for Islam, and other crackpot schemes such as “no-fly” zones in the Levant. Sound familiar? As a so-called “conservative” supporter of the Clintons, Max is now an official inductee into the no-fault school of foreign policy.

At the moment, Boot has a chair at the Council on Foreign Relations table. The CFR, when not thumping the globalist drum, is that venerable “non-profit,” icon that publishes the journal Foreign Affairs. By charter, the Council claims to be independent and “non-partisan.”

Most Beltway bandits cultivate a low political profile in Washington lest they offend one party or the other that might dispense contract or study monies. Boot has thrown the CFR “non-partisan” shibboleth under the bus and now squanders his personal gravitas and CFR reputation for the dump Trump movement. So much for “independence and non-partisanship” at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Voters may have chosen Trump, but guys like Max Boot and the CFR know better than to trust democracy, or the nation, to the wisdom of crowds.

Flying under a CFR banner, Boot has taken to the airways, notably Public Radio and print Media to trash Donald Trump in 2016.

Conservative and Neo-Con critiques of Trump are a hollow mix of adolescent speculations, ad vericundiam and ad hominem rants. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Trump doesn’t have any military or foreign policy failures in his resume. Trump is damned for what he says while Hillary gets a pass from conservatives for the policy disasters she has wrought.

Apparently, logic is no longer a required subject at Berkeley, Yale, or the CFR. Simply put, the Max Boot argument comes to: “I’m a real Republican and a true conservative and I’m voting for Hillary.” What Max fails to say is that he have a better chance for a job in Clinton III, than he and his peers will ever have in Trump I.

The things that bother Max Boot illustrate the fears and loathing midst the establishment, the media, and national security nabobs. The rap against Trump is limited to rhetoric, temperament, sensitivity, and personal income tax transparency. How does any of this trivia matter compared to the Clinton rap sheet which now includes the potential of non-profit fraud, congressional perjury, and endangering national security for personal convenience?

Donald Trump is dangerous too – but for very different reasons.

Trump is a clear and present danger to every policy troll inside the Beltway that would lose a job or influence under an administration that might use effectiveness, victory, or success as the metrics for evaluating military or foreign policy.

Alas, America might be made great again by just scrapping the “non-profit” barnacles, recidivist woodworms, and smug intellectuals off the ship of state. The foreign policy establishment offensive against proves that Trump is correct when he charges that the Beltway establishment, right and left, is a racket. The game in DC is the game. Results seldom matter.

If Trump has done nothing else, he has flushed the partisan deadwood from the tall weeds at State, Defense, the Intelligence Community, and the so-called “non-profit” community that feeds at the national security buffet. Lucrative contracts for think tanks are squandered in Washington because obese cabinet departments are so bloated and inert that they can no longer think for themselves.

Michelle Obama is correct. Obesity is a national epidemic, especially in Washington, DC.

The trashing of Trump by both the Republican right and Clinton left is a symptom of political androgyny in modern American politics. There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties if behavior or image are the metrics. Both parties spend wildly on social programs that are little more than elaborate vote buying rackets. And both parties endorse a foreign policy that is expensive, reckless, and dangerous.

Take Mike Morell, the timid Intelligence apparatchik, former deputy dog at CIA, that passively watched and then covered up the Islamist slaughter at Benghazi. Morell now takes to the New York Times to endorse Hillary while using Public Radio to call for a war with Russian in Syria.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The significance of guys like Morell and Boot in camp Clinton is that they represent the Obama era lobby that appeases real enemies, Islamism for example, whilst rattling sabers at chimeras, the Russians for example. Were they honest, they would have to admit that there’s more national security funding to be had in a manufactured threat that includes the Kremlin and Beijing.

G. Murphy Donovan is a former military Intelligence officer and think tank veteran (RAND Corp.) who writes about the politics of national security.