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It is always a good sign when a bunch of pundits who push for increased military aggression at every opportunity are upset about the same thing, but I'm going to single out Max Boot here because his Bernie tantrum has been especially hilarious to watch.
In an article for The Washington Post titled "Bernie Sanders is 'insanely consistent.' That's nothing to brag about," Boot bizarrely decided to attack Sanders on the fact that he hasn't often had to admit that he's been wrong about things.
"But it is true that I've rethought my views on some important matters, such as the Iraq War, and started speaking out on issues such global warming, gun control and white privilege where reality conflicts with conservative dogma," Boot writes, adding that he can be trusted now "precisely because I have changed my mind. Don't trust anyone who hasn't."
It is fascinating that Boot should choose consistency as a line of attack against Sanders, because he himself has been remarkably consistent throughout his entire career. He's just been consistent in the other direction.
Promoting fiendishly aggressive interventionist agendas everywhere from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya to Syria to Iran to Russia, the former PNAC member Boot has been a leading narrative manager for some of the most catastrophically disastrous military interventions in living memory. He has not just promoted imperialist agendas which destroyed the lives of untold millions of human beings, but has also consistently promoted the pernicious underpinning philosophy of that imperialism as in his 2001 masterpiece "The Case for American Empire."
And that is the one and only reason Boot remains gainfully employed as a famous and widely circulated mainstream foreign policy analyst. He has no redeeming characteristics. He is not smart. He is not charming. He is never, ever right about anything. He simply advocates for the deployment of expensive military equipment consistently and reliably. The oligarchic media love that in a guy.
Boot, who has been giddy with excitement that his fellow traveler John Bolton has entered his side of the impeachment debate, wrapped up his unintentional self-parody by cheerleading Trump's regime change interventionism in Venezuela and the right-wing military coup in Bolivia. After its publication he quickly found himself under fire on Twitter by the Sanders campaign's David Sirota, who rightly criticized his forceful promotion of the Iraq invasion. Boot responded by whining that the "Bernie Bro" should accept his admission that Iraq was a mistake and forget about the whole thing.
"Me: I was wrong and I admit it, but I learned from it. Bernie should too. He's been wrong about some stuff. Bernie Bro: You were wrong. Why should we listen to you?" Boot tweeted.
"LOL. Exactly," Jennifer Rubin responded.
And that just says so much about the coddled, insulated, completely unchallenged life that these mass media pundits are accustomed to, right there. To believe that you can help pave the way for a war that kills a million people based on lies and then years later say "Oh yeah I made an oopsie with that one, I need a do-over" requires an unbelievable amount of entitlement and privilege, let alone to be able to self-righteously hold that admission up as some kind of superior virtue that is worthy of praise and deference.
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