War Is Too Important To Be Left to the Politicians . . . No I Mean the Generals Posted by Michael Cohen

Look I understand that when you're an unabashed believer in US military interventions it can be difficult to keep ones own argument straight but Max Boot really needs to try a little harder. 

Here's Max three days ago, channeling his inner General Jack D. Ripper, disparaging the Obama Administration for floating the idea of a more rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan and more important, ignoring the generals on the ground in Afghanistan:

The view of our veteran representatives in Kabul–General John Allen and Ambassador Ryan Crocker–is rather different. They have made clear they need to keep at least 68,000 troops in Afghanistan . . What do their views matter? They’re only the men on the front lines having to cope with a potent insurgency that threatens American interests. The White House has its own calculations which, one suspects, are guided less by the imperatives on the ground and more by the imperative to tell the voters prior to the November election that this president ended one war in Iraq and is ending another in Afghanistan.

Shorter Max Boot: War is too important to be left to the politicians.

Here's Max Boot today channeling his inner Clemenceau on Syria:

It’s easy to tell when the Pentagon is opposed to a military intervention. That’s when we hear leaks saying how difficult such action would be. We heard them in the 1990s concerning Bosnia and Kosovo, we heard them last year over Libya, and we are hearing them now about Syria.

. . . Washington could assemble a coalition of the willing as President Bill Clinton did for Kosovo. But that will happen only if the Obama administration decides that action is called for and does not allow itself to be paralyzed by the Pentagon’s reluctance to intervene.

Shorter Max Boot: War is too important to be left to the generals.

In an ideal world this rather blatant and stunning inconsistency might actually invalidate the arguments of the author. Ha!