Gary Johnson knows what he doesn’t know. Unfortunately, he also seems to think himself clever enough to be able to spin this obliviousness into an asset. In seeking to reframe his unapologetic thoughtlessness on matters of statecraft as some new species of judiciousness, he insults the nation’s intelligence. Johnson has demonstrated his abject ignorance on matters related to elementary foreign affairs repeatedly over the last two weeks. Rather than admit he is out of his depth, Johnson insists perversely that his sub-literate performance is itself bona fides to serve as commander-in-chief.

The first float in a parade of inanities dazzled onlookers last week when Johnson was asked by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to name one foreign leader he admired. He could not, but only because he admitted that he was drawing a blank on every serving foreign leader. Callously, he called this bit of cerebral paralysis an “Aleppo moment,” after another disastrous cable news interview in which he confessed he was unaware of the ongoing genocidal siege of that Syrian city.

Rather than appear apologetic over this folly, Johnson claimed that he meant to do that. The former New Mexico governor took to his Twitter account to insist that he still couldn’t come up with a kind word for any foreign leader, as though he was simply indulging in a little American chauvinism. He wasn’t. No one was buying it.

It was because so few were buying this bullheaded spin that Johnson wandered into another snare. Wrapping himself in the idea that his lack of a geopolitical education was somehow noble, the Libertarian nominee for president even had the gall to suggest that his bewilderment would save lives. “The fact that somebody can dot the i’s and cross the t’s on a foreign leader’s geographic location then allows them to put our military in harm’s way,” he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell.

“You should have a working knowledge of what is going on, and what is going on are politicians that beat their chests, that claim to know about what we should be doing,” Johnson continued. “And because you put them forward as being knowledgeable, that we then put our trust and faith in politicians that put our men and women, service men and women, in harm’s way.” The crux of Johnson’s case seems to be that a fool would not get America into disadvantageous foreign entanglements if only because he could not. It’s an argument that only a fool could love.

Johnson’s haplessness ceased to be pitifully endearing, however, when he grossly slandered the United States and its military in another effort to camouflage his ignorance as sagacity. In an interview with the New York Times, Johnson—a famous noninterventionist and skeptic of the use of military force—sought to justify his predisposition by suggesting that America is no better than Bashar al-Assad’s Syria or Vladimir Putin’s Russia when it comes to crimes of war.

“[W]e’re so much better than that,” Johnson said sarcastically when asked about Russian and Syrian atrocities, particularly those around the city of Aleppo. “We’re so much better when in Afghanistan, we bomb the hospital, and 60 people are killed in the hospital.”

Johnson is right. American AC-130 did strike a Doctors Without Borders hospital on the outskirts of Kunduz in April, killing scores. We know quite a bit about that strike, including the radio chatter of the controllers who executed it, the sources who gave Americans bad information, their motives, and the timeline that led up to that incident. That kind of transparency is what any responsible Western power does when it makes a tragic mistake on the battlefield. Only the most toxic of conspiratorially minded paranoids could dismiss the preponderance of evidence indicating an accident in this case, or convince themselves that all this evidence is fabricated.

Russia and Syria are also striking hospitals (plural) in Aleppo—including maternity hospitals—and these are not accidents. Russia and Syria have pursued a starvation campaign in Aleppo, with the aim of cutting off the city until its citizens drop dead from lack of water and nutrition. The United States alleges and has provided evidence to support the claim that Russian warplanes deliberately targeted a United Nations aid convoy seeking entry into Aleppo during an ill-fated ceasefire. Moscow has been accused of using cluster munitions, incendiary bombs, and white phosphorus on the battlefield in Syria. Assad’s crimes against human dignity and his sponsorship of terrorist organizations that now threaten the West are well documented. If Johnson truly sees no distinction between the United States and revisionist powers like Russia or criminal regimes like Assad’s, he’s morally bankrupt.

More likely, however, Gary Johnson just doesn’t know any of this, and he is aware of his obliviousness. In a childlike fashion, he is seeking to disguise his ignorance as enlightened cynicism. It’s a transparent and juvenile tactic, but it’s hardly harmless. Impugning the U.S. military as Johnson has is as ugly as it is defamatory. The Libertarian Party nominee is drawing the support of hundreds of thousands of voters who are disappointed in the two major-party candidates, and he is particularly popular with young people. By fetishizing ignorance and calling it virtue, he is poisoning the minds of his young supporters. This is irresponsible. If he will not apologize, Johnson should at least stop talking about matters he doesn’t understand.