Neocon Op-Ed Madness

Re Op-Ed Contributor: Send the State Department to War by Max Boot: This was written by one of the leading neoconservatives who argued relentlessly in the 1990s that the United States should invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein.

Thinking that his ideas have not yet damaged America enough, Mr. Boot wants us to put nation-building into overdrive. But that's not all. "The Agency for International Development, in particular, has seen a precipitous decline in personnel. In the 1960s, it had 1,900 officers in South Vietnam alone. Today it has only 1,200 to cover the entire world, forcing it to rely mainly on contractors. If we expand its ranks, it could become our lead nation-building agency, sort of a global FEMA, marshaling the kind of resources that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan." I see, we need to emulate AID in 1960s South Vietnam. Yeah, that led to one heck of an accomplishment! And who else but a nation-building ideologue would argue for our foreign policy institutions to be more like FEMA!

Here's another example of crap-for-brains, neocon thinking: "To buttress the growing corps of government reconstruction experts, we should have civilian reservists on call who could be summoned by the Agency for International Development in an emergency like military reservists. They could bring expertise in municipal administration, sewage treatment, banking, electricity generation, and countless other disciplines needed to rebuild a war-torn country. President Bush endorsed this notion in his last State of the Union address, but too little has been done to turn it into reality." Yeah, let's go totally bankrupt pouring our borrowed dollars into ingrate foreign countries. That always works to our future advantage - not!

Have you ever heard of the expression "when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging"? I guess Boot hasn't: "One of the most important shortages we have faced in Iraq and Afghanistan is in experienced police officers who can train local counterparts. Much of the job has fallen on the military police, whose troops are too few in number, and on civilian contractors, who are of uneven quality. We need to fill the vacuum by creating a federal constabulary force — a uniformed counterpart to the F.B.I. that, like the Italian carabinieri, could be deployed abroad.

Its efforts could be supplemented by municipal policemen if we pass a law allowing the federal government to call up local police officers without loss of pay or seniority and to compensate hometown police departments for their absence. Along with these police officers, we need a deployable corps of lawyers, judges and prison guards who could set up functioning legal and penal systems abroad."

How about our military? "Even with increased participation from civilian branches of government, the armed forces will still have a major role to play in what President Bush calls the “Long War.” But not necessarily a kinetic role. If we can train and advise foreign militaries, they can fight our battles for us." Yeah, those Northern Alliance foreigners we hired in Afghanistan did an outstanding job hunting down Osama bin Laden on their own turf - Tora Bora. Thank God Eisenhower had a better idea.

"We will have a hard time prevailing in today’s war as long as fewer than one-half of 1 percent of all service members have any grasp of Arabic." Unless, of course, the bombsite controls our airmen use are written in English. Duh!

I have just one wish for Max Boot: please donate your services to al Qaeda. That would go a long way towards leveling the "playing field".