OK, so the American Right is stupider than I thought..

Two defences of appointing Bolton as National Security Adviser have appeared overnight - one from Hugh Hewitt, who I think is a lightweight twit, but another from David French at National Review, which I find a bit more surprising.   I guess I didn't realise the extent to which Bolton kept contacts with Right wing punditry.

Both articles contain some pretty inane comments.  Hewitt in particular has to go back to 2007 to find one line which he latches onto as evidence of Bolton's reasonableness:

Critics charge that Bolton likes war — a ridiculous assertion. As he told me in one especially memorable two-hour interview back in 2007: “Nobody should want a war on the Korean Peninsula.” Chew on that, critics.

It's like he's writing for his high school paper.

At least David French tackles head on Bolton's recent musings:

Even one of the pieces that the New York Times cites to justify its alarm — Bolton’s 2017 Wall Street Journal article analyzing military options in North Korea — contains this key sentence: “The U.S. should obviously seek South Korea’s agreement (and Japan’s) before using force, but no foreign government, even a close ally, can veto an action to protect Americans from Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons.”

This is a sensible statement, indicating both the desire for agreement with key allies and the necessity of national self-defense...

A sensible statement?   Given that it implies Bolton thinks that a pre-emptive strike on North Korea is something the US could consider, and do so even if South Korea says "what, are you out of your mind?  We're the ones who are going to suffer the consequences in tens or hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties":  no, it's not a "sensible" thing to say.

If you want an article detailing the time - a little over a decade ago - when Republicans could see the danger and problem with Bolton's dishonesty and behaviour in government, have a read of this column at the New York Times.