Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:41:11 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Max Boot :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Max+Boot istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us MAX BOOT http://www.nysun.com/opinion/time-to-send-in-the-mercenaries/33751/ Fri, 2 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST So the United States has brokered a cease-fire among the warring factions in Darfur, and the U.N. Security Council has authorized the deployment of a peacekeeping force. To anyone blissfully unfamiliar with history, this sounds like a decisive step that will finally end the violence that has left at least 200,000 dead and 2 million homeless. Alas, this is not the first cease-fire agreement in Darfur. An accord was reached in 2004 and was immediately violated. There is no reason to think that... MAX BOOT http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hamastan/18895/ Fri, 19 Aug 2005 00:00:00 EST For almost 40 years, the conceit has been growing around the world that Palestinian terrorism can be explained and even excused by Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This was always a dubious proposition in light of the fact that Arabs have been fighting Israel since its formation in 1948, not since its conquest of those territories in 1967. The Palestine Liberation Organization began its attacks while the West Bank was still part of Jordan and Gaza was part of Egypt. Now the... MAX BOOT http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fighting-for-uncle-sam/15720/ Mon, 20 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST The Army is getting desperate. Having fallen 25% short of already reduced recruiting goals last month, it is raising enlistment bonuses to $40,000 in some cases and lowering standards to accept and retain soldiers who would have been turned away in years past. A minor criminal record? No high school diploma? Uncle Sam still wants you. Down this way disaster lies - the undoing of the finest armed forces in U.S. history. But what choice is there? With combat dragging on in Iraq and plenty of jobs... MAX BOOT http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stepping-up-its-game/12776/ Mon, 25 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Despite last week's bad news, things have gotten better in Iraq. A lot of the reason has to do with the success of the January 30 election and the growing competence of Iraqi security forces. But give credit where it's due: The U.S. military has stepped up its game. When the insurgency began in the summer of 2003, the U.S. armed forces were caught off guard. Most soldiers and Marines had little training for, or interest in, nation-building and counterinsurgency operations. But the U.S. military... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/underestimating-chalabi/12075/ Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST In 1987, after he was exonerated of corruption charges, former Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan issued the classic plea of the wronged man: "Which office do I go to get my reputation back?" Whichever office it is, Ahmad Chalabi may want to apply there as well. The leader of the Iraqi National Congress has been the most unfairly maligned man on the planet in recent years. If you believe what you read, Chalabi is a con man, a crook and, depending on which day of the week it is, either an... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/abolish-tenure/10799/ Fri, 18 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST To see where the balance of power lies in American academia, look no further than the University of Colorado, where the Ward Churchill scandal has claimed its first victim. No, not Mr. Churchill, the professor who gained national notoriety for describing the victims of the World Trade Center attack as "little Eichmanns" who basically deserved what they got. He's stepped down as chairman of the ethnic studies department, but he's still teaching classes and earning $94,242 a year, in spite of the... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/rethinking-the-iwo-jima-myth/10446/ Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST On February 19, 1945, 30,000 Marines splashed ashore on a small volcanic island in the central Pacific. After four days of bitter fighting, a small patrol reached the peak of Mt. Suribachi, where it planted a U.S. flag in an iconic scene captured by photographer Joe Rosenthal. This famous image was hardly the end of the battle. Iwo Jima would not be secure until March 26. Almost all of the 21,000 Japanese defenders elected to die rather than surrender. Rooting them out cost more than 6,000... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/new-determination/10097/ Fri, 4 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST In 2003, more than a month before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote in the Weekly Standard that the forthcoming fall of Baghdad "may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history - events like the storming of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall - after which everything is different. If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if), it may mark the moment when the powerful antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and began to... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/uncle-sam-wants-tu/9739/ Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:00:00 EST It is hard to pick up a newspaper these days without reading about Army and Marine Corps recruiting and retention woes. Nonstop deployments and the danger faced by troops in Iraq are making it hard for both services to fill their ranks. The same goes for the National Guard and Reserves. (The Navy and Air Force, which are much less in harm's way, have no such difficulty.) Just to stay at their present sizes, the Army and Marines are shoveling money into more advertising, extra recruiters, and... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/isnt-it-pragmatic/9479/ Fri, 18 Feb 2005 00:00:00 EST MUNICH, Germany - The annual Munich security conference, known as Wehrkunde, serves as a useful barometer of trans-Atlantic relations. Every year, various defense and foreign policy muckety-mucks and hangers-on from the United States and Europe gather at the fancy Bayerischer Hof hotel here for a couple of days of gabbing and gorging. Two years ago, when I first attended (in my official capacity as a hanger-on), the conference was held on the eve of the Iraq war, and tensions were running high... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/2-billion-and-change/9128/ Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:00:00 EST "And the great and proud nation of Egypt, which showed the way toward peace in the Middle East, can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East." - President Bush, the State of the Union address, 2005 Strong words alone will not dislodge an entrenched dictator like Hosni Mubarak. Obviously, we're not going to send the 3rd Infantry Division to achieve regime change in Cairo. How, then, is Mr. Bush going to back up his demand for democracy? Here's a proposal: Reduce or eliminate... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hamas-decimated/7786/ Mon, 17 Jan 2005 00:00:00 EST Visiting Israel last month, I regularly went out to eat in crowded restaurants and to shop in crowded malls. The tourists may not have gotten the message yet - Jerusalem's Old City was almost empty just a week before Christmas - but it is clear that the four-year-old intifida has faded into insignificance. Life in Israel has returned to normal, or at least as normal as it ever gets in a country that's faced threats to its existence from day one. Conventional wisdom holds that it is almost... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/voices-of-the-middle-east/7386/ Fri, 7 Jan 2005 00:00:00 EST During World War II, Frank Capra made a series of films called "Why We Fight" to rally Americans behind the war effort. Imagine a filmmaker doing that today. Actually, it's impossible to imagine. Hollywood either prefers to stay away from the war on terrorism altogether (the film version of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" changed the villains from Islamist extremists to neo-Nazis) or to use it, even in its pre-September 11 form, as a morality play to warn against lost civil liberties (see... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/exporting-ukraine/7047/ Fri, 31 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST One of the most inspiring events of 2004 happened on the last weekend of the year: the election of pro-Western democrat Viktor Yushchenko, who had to overcome everything from poisoning to voter fraud in order to claim the presidency of Ukraine. The triumph of the Orange Revolution should dispel the quaint notion still prevalent in many Western universities and foreign ministries that democracy is a luxury good suitable only for rich countries with a tradition of liberalism stretching back... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/in-from-the-cold/6484/ Fri, 17 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST ISTANBUL, Turkey - For most Americans, the most important day this month is December 25. For Turks, it's December 17. Today, the European Union will announce whether it will open full membership negotiations with Turkey. In contrast to the ambivalence that surrounds the E.U. in most of its member states, Turks seem to be, almost without exception, enthusiastic about falling under the sway of a Brussels bureaucracy. E.U. membership is widely expected to deliver an economic windfall in the form... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stop-the-double-standards/6121/ Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST Imagine if American troops were accused of sexually exploiting children in impoverished nations. Imagine if an American Cabinet secretary were accused of groping a female subordinate, whose complaint was then swatted aside by the president. Imagine if the head of an American government agency and the president's own offspring were accused of complicity in the biggest embezzlement racket in history. Those would be pretty big stories, no? Above-the-fold, top-of-the-newscast stories. Yet the... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/convincing-the-insurgents/5749/ Fri, 3 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST "Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won." -The Duke of Wellington. The press is taking Wellington's dictum to heart. It seems positively despondent over the battle of Fallujah. It is right and proper to mourn the death of 71 Americans and the wounding of hundreds more. As Wellington realized, martial glory rings hollow when weighed against the cost in blood. But it is wrong to rush to the opposite extreme by assuming, as so much of the current commentary... MAX BOOT http://www.nysun.com/opinion/thanking-our-troops/5400/ Fri, 26 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST It is all too easy to take the all-volunteer armed forces for granted. They've been around now for 31 years, ever since the draft was abolished in 1973. We have become used to having a high-quality military filled by dedicated young women and men willing to put their lives on the line for less money than Donald Trump hands out in tips every week. It is worth remembering how extraordinary and unusual our service members really are - and how much we owe them this Thanksgiving. The voluntarism... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/terrorist-kleptocracy/4739/ Fri, 12 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST It is considered bad form to speak ill of the dead, or even of the soon-to-be-dead. But I will make an exception for Yasser Arafat, the pathetic embodiment of all that went wrong in the Third World after the demise of the European empires. All too many rulers of "liberated" nations in the second half of the 20th century - the likes of Mao Zedong (Communist China), Sukarno (Indonesia), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Moammar Gadhafi (Libya) and Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt) - proved to be devotees of the... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/for-a-lasting-majority/4366/ Fri, 5 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST Lyndon Baines Johnson couldn't do it. Neither could Harry Truman. The last president to run for and win re-election in the midst of an inconclusive war was William McKinley, who in 1900 earned slightly more than 51% of the vote notwithstanding a nasty insurrection in the Philippines. It seems fitting that President Bush has duplicated McKinley's feat and even his winning percentage, since campaign tsar Karl Rove has often spoken of his admiration for McKinley and his Karl Rove, Mark Hanna. Rove... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/box-of-chocolates/4077/ Mon, 1 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST If Bush and Kerry partisans can agree on anything, it's that the stakes tomorrow couldn't be higher. "The most important election of our lifetime," both parties intone. Like most pieces of conventional wisdom, this oft-repeated shibboleth leaves plenty of room for doubt. One of the hidden strengths of the American electoral system is that it rarely presents voters with a very stark choice. Both parties hew closely to the center, and, notwithstanding pre-election bloviation, there is always a... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/reasons-for-hope-in-iraq/3644/ Fri, 22 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST With all that's gone wrong in Iraq, critics of the war can take a certain grim satisfaction in being vindicated. Why on earth didn't President Bush listen to their warnings, which now appear eerily prescient? Just recall what antiwar advocates said.... Senator Kerry: "I do not believe our nation is prepared for war....If we do go to war, for years people will ask why Congress gave in. They will ask why there was such a rush to so much death and destruction when it did not have to happen."... MAX BOOT http://www.nysun.com/opinion/why-john-kerry-scares-me/3283/ Fri, 15 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST By no means am I a reflexive Bush backer. I voted for Senator McCain in the primaries four years ago, and still suspect that he would have made a better commander in chief. As a Blue-Stater, I am more liberal than President Bush on social issues such as stem-cell research and gay marriage. As a fiscal conservative, I'm not happy about his free-spending ways. And I share some of the common dismay about Mr. Bush's inarticulateness and abrasiveness. Yet, in the end, I'm a one-issue voter. Having... Max Boot http://www.nysun.com/opinion/privatize-space-travel/2920/ Fri, 8 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EST It somehow seemed appropriate that SpaceShipOne took off from an airstrip in the Mojave desert just a few miles from Edwards Air Force Base. For it was at Edwards that a postwar generation of test pilots with ice water in their veins - members of what Tom Wolfe called the "Brotherhood of the Right Stuff" - took up one experimental rocket plane after another to push the outside of the envelope. Their leader was Chuck Yeager, the drawling World War II fighter ace from the coal fields of West...