Time's Cowboy Liberalism

First the media accuses Bush of unilateral “Cowboy Diplomacy”, and now Time is saying Bush is abandoning that policy. Yet neither are true. Bush is far from being the trigger-happy warmonger the press fear and there really hasn't been a major change in policy. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were joined by the “Coalition of the Willing”, a total of fourtynine nations in all, more than we had in World War II. Last time I checked we were still occupying said countries, with no mushroom clouds in sight.

The cover of Time has a picture of Bush wearing a gigantic cowboy hat with only his legs showing beneath. The tone of the four page cover story is grim.

“”The shift under way in Bush's foreign policy is bigger and more seismic than a change of wardrobe or a modulation of tone.””

Time makes statements like this throughout the article, one would think that Bush had already brought all the troops home, of maybe some of them. The “shift” is never truely defined. What is unwittingly defined is the folly of much of the bash-Bush crowd in the media. I wonder what Zarqawi thinks of the “shift?”, oh... never mind.

They even get the word cowboy wrong. A cowboy is someone who herds and raises cattle. As far as I can tell, cowboys weren't involved in politics and weren't especially violent. Perhaps they have the sherrif's of the old west in mind, men of few words, and always carrying a gun. Men of determination and grit. Liberals don't want a sherrif or a cowboy, but a man of much talk and little action. A UN-happy appeaser who is more likely to weep than fight. You know, like Jimmy Carter.

Time can prove no shift, but they can pound the quagmire drum 'till doomsday while pretending to climb around inside the minds of Bush, and Rice.

“”Rice is a foreign policy realist, less inclined to the moralizing approach of the neoconservatives who dominated Bush's War Cabinet in the first term. Her push for pragmatism has rubbed off on hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney, the primary intellectual force behind Bush's post-9/11 policies.””

But what does that mean? Where's the “siesmic change”? Never mind we're back to the quagmire,

“"We put three countries on notice--Iraq, Iran and North Korea--and we attacked one of them pre-emptively," says retired Marine Corps General Joseph Hoar, who commanded the U.S. Central Command from 1991 to '94. "Now we find that was a put-up job.””

Gen Hoar forgot all about the 200 WMD's declassified last week and praticly parrot's the “Bush lied, people died” slogan, who needs Bagdad Bob with guys like this around? Iran earned it's regime change by snubbing 19 UN resolutions, deal with it.

Time did make some valid points.

“”elections are producing governments more hospitable to extremism, not less. Exhibit A was the election of Hamas, a group the U.S. and Europe classify as a terrorist organization””

This is certainly true in Palestine, though I would argue this was a case of more of the same. Arafat was a devout terrorist. Democracy is no cure for the violent jihad, anti-semetism and anti-Americanism so deeply ingrained the Muslim mind. The “Arab street” still thinks that Jews are running the world along with the US. Democracy hasn't stopped the suicide bombings and it probably never will.

But this doesn't make the entire Bush policy a failure that has been abandoned. The press has leaned on Bush throughout the war, no doubt to the glee of our enemies, and that critisism from the left has dragged on his popularity. Time and it's cohorts can take much of the credit for this and that's what this article is really about, Not so much the failure of Bush, but a victory for the left. The fact that these two outcomes dovetail into a leftist media during wartime illustrates how far the MSM has sunk.