On January 10, Max Boot committed heresy. Best known as an aficionado of all things colonial — jodhpurs, pith helmets, Kipling, the French Foreign Legion, noble wars — Boot spoke words of praise for press coverage of the Iraq invasion and occupation, and warned against the brain-rotting temptation to blame the reporting of bad outcomes for the bad outcomes themselves. At the same time, he labeled the occupation of Iraq, and by extension his beloved New American Empire, as all but unsalvageable.

If you wanted to figure out what was happening over the last four years, you would have been infinitely better off paying attention to their writing than to what the president or his top generals were saying. If we fail to achieve our goals in Iraq — which the administration defines as a “unified, stable, democratic and secure nation” — it won’t be the fault of the ink-stained wretches or even their blow-dried TV counterparts.

To argue otherwise deflects blame from those who deserve it, in the upper echelons of the administration and the armed forces. Perhaps that’s the point.

Um, yeah, perhaps.

It’s evident that the press didn’t bugger Iraq, and it’s nice that Boot now recognizes as much (he didn’t always). It’s also evident that the press contributed greatly to getting us there, but blaming them for that wouldn’t even occur to him. Like many of his colleagues in the land of think tanks, he still believes that the invasion was a fine idea; he’s just disappointed that the administration screwed it up. He’ll probably be disappointed with the outcome of the pending attack on Iran, too. And Syria, if there’s a spare aircraft carrier for that. At least the occupation of Hawaii continues to go smoothly.

Still, his assessment of the post-invasion reporting is remarkably clear-headed for someone who is witnessing his raison d’être go down in flames. This is the man who once wrote that “Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.” This is the man who once chafed at the American reluctance to call the American Empire an empire. A lesser man would be deep in his cups at the neighborhood pub instead of writing a very occasionally sane column for the Los Angeles Times. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Regardless, I hope this minor irruption of common sense doesn’t cost him his sinecures at the Times and the Council on Foreign Relations. He could be our inside man.

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