If anyone needed more evidence of Max Boot's dishonesty and the Stalinist atmosphere of the Never Trump camp, here's this.
Some background.
The McMaster purge of pro-Trump and Islam realist experts at the NSC claimed three particular scalps. Derek Harvey, Rich Higgins and Ezra Cohen-Watnick. Those aren't the only three. But they are the three big ones.
The Never Trump camp threw everything it had into defending McMaster. It tarred Higgins. It tried to smear Cohen-Watnick. But Derek Harvey posed a problem. Not only was he a highly respected figure with an unchallenged record, but he had been doing pieces for the Weekly Standard.
Yet the Weekly Standard had no problem tossing him overboard.
Then it was Max Boot's turn at Commentary to write one of those dismissive "crazy right wingers oppose McMaster" pieces that exist only to be retweeted by fellow members of the Never Trump media network.
So why the animosity against McMaster? The most immediate cause is the fact that he has fired from the NSC three populist-nationalists who should never have been hired in the first place—
Boot attacks Higgins and Cohen-Watnick by name. He doesn't mention the third. And for good reason.
Max Boot had once praised Derek Harvey as an unsung hero of the Iraq surge.
Here's Max in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago...
Like all victories, the surge had many fathers. Messrs. Gordon and Trainor amply chronicle the valor of the frontline troops, but they also single out some unsung heroes who operated behind the scenes. Col. Derek Harvey, for example, an intelligence officer who was warning as early as 2004 that the situation was much worse than the official assessments claimed and arguing that it was imperative to reach out to the Sunni tribes.
Isn't it interesting how Harvey went from an "unsung hero" to a nameless man who should never have been hired.
Max Boot doesn't directly attack Harvey. He knows he couldn't get away with it. Instead he takes the cowardly low road. We've had plenty of lectures from Never Trumpers on how corrupting support for Trump is. Here's an example of how corrupting opposition to Trump is.
