Boot Max Boot’s Recruiting Plan by Jacob G. Hornberger-The Price of Liberty

The Future of Freedom Foundation

03/18/10

Boot Max Boot’s Recruiting Plan
by Jacob G. Hornberger

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June 22, 2005

Max Boot, one of the most ardent boosters of the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq and one of the most pro-empire proponents you’ll ever find, is lamenting the difficulty that U.S. military recruiters are having in signing up young American men to serve in the military. Boot is a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a former editor at the Wall Street Journal. Given his enthusiastic devotion to the U.S. government’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, Boot rejects withdrawing from Iraq, but he also rejects the idea of a draft because the latter would “dilute the high quality of the all-volunteer force.”

So, what does Boot suggest? In a June 16, 2005, L.A. Times op-ed entitled “Defend America, Become American,” he says that the military should recruit foreigners to do the fighting, dying, and killing in exchange for U.S. citizenship. Yes, you read that right — he didn’t say simply recruit immigrants living in the United States — he said the U.S. military should recruit foreigners living anywhere in the world and make them American citizens in return. Presumably Boot feels that this would not “dilute the high quality of the all-volunteer force.” He even uses the French (!) Foreign Legion as his model.

Anticipating the adverse reaction that he knows will come from many in the anti-immigrant (and anti-French) crowd, Boot says, “There is no better way to build [a cultural bond to America] than through military training and discipline. Drill sergeants have been forging cohesive units out of disparate elements since the days of the Roman legions.”

So, how about that? According to Boot, culture and militarism now go hand in hand, just as they did in the Roman Empire (or, for that matter, in the Soviet and British empires as well). Boot camp, humiliation, right-face and left-face, cadence songs, saluting, obeying orders, spit-shining, and “yes sir” and “no sir.” Now, that’s what the culture of a free country is all about, according to neoconservative icon Max Boot.

I’ve got another solution that perhaps Boot hasn’t considered: Rather than doling out advice on how the U.S. government should run the occupation of a country that never attacked the United States and that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and rather than coming up with bizarre solutions to the U.S. government’s recruiting woes, why doesn’t Boot himself volunteer for the army, just as NFL football star Pat Tillman did after the 9/11 attacks?

That is, if Boot honestly believes that the security of the nation (or the government) is at stake or if he feels that democracy in Iraq is important, why is he wasting his time coming up with far-fetched plans to fill the military’s ranks? Why doesn’t he instead go down to his recruiter’s office and simply sign up and volunteer for service in Iraq? Wouldn’t that be the “patriotic” thing to do? Doesn’t genuine leadership entail his doing what he is asking others to do? Just as it’s easier to be good with other people’s money, isn’t it easier to be courageous with other people’s lives?

Or does Boot feel that only the poor, uneducated people of Latin America, Africa, and Asia (or the United States), and not the elite, well-to-do, intellectuals of America should be put in the position of fighting, dying, and killing for the U.S. government’s military adventures overseas?

What better reflection of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the neoconservative vision for our nation than Boot’s military-recruitment plan? Not only have these people destroyed Iraq, unless they’re stopped their pro-militarism and pro-empire vision will ultimately destroy our nation as well.

Samuel Bostaph is head of the economics department at the University of Dallas and an academic advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation

Anthony Gregory is a policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation

James Bovard is author of The Bush Betrayal and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation

Benedict LaRosa is a historian and writer and serves as a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation

Bart Frazier is program director at The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine.