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July 10, 2006

Confused Americans for Truth - The End of the End of Cowboy Diplomacy

Time magazine's cover story this week is called The End of Cowboy Diplomacy. Darrell of Morning Coffee makes an excellent point: Bush's policy toward Iran and North Korea has been chock full of multilateralism and restraint, and those areas are precisely where his foreign policy is breaking down.

Time makes the same point early in the article.

Pursuing the forward-leaning foreign policy envisioned in the Bush Doctrine is nearly impossible at a time when the U.S. is trying to figure out how to extricate itself from Iraq. Around the world, both the U.S.'s friends and its adversaries are taking note--and in many cases, taking advantage--of the strains on the superpower. If the toppling of Saddam Hussein marked the high-water mark of U.S. hegemony, the past three years have witnessed a steady erosion in Washington's ability to bend the world to its will.

You know, Bruce would have heart failure if I ever tried to write something like that. There's not a single hard fact in the entire paragraph. Worse, by talking about the Iraq war in terms of extrication, Time leaves the impression that the ultimate goal is retreating rather than winning.

Talking of world opinion in the vague terms of friends and adversaries enables Time to parade an impression of an impression as a fact. In the six pages of text, there are exactly four direct quotes criticizing Bush policy in Iraq-- two from Clinton Administration officials and two from academic political scientists. Indeed, the only evidence Time has to offer regarding the negative effects of Bush's Iraq policy on foreign minds is the fact that Hamas won the recent elections in Palestine. This is a pretty big stretch, especially when it turns out that a majority of the Palestinians voted against Hamas.

That's right, folks: the only hard evidence Time has for its contention about the effect of the Iraq war is based on a falsehood.

That said, it does indeed seem that the Bush Administration has pulled back from its tough talk of yesteryear. The error in the Time article is their contention that we've abandoned cowboy diplomacy because it has failed. In fact, we have abandoned cowboy diplomacy because the Democrats have completely undermined it. That is, after all, why I'm on a hunger strike. Time couches all its arguments in terms of global perceptions, but to the extent that perception exists, it cannot be denied that Bush's opponents-- including Time itself-- are the ones producing that perception.

This is probably why Time had to put so much fluff into its cover story. Our foreign policy is failing, but the fix-- fewer Democrats in Congress and fewer people reading Time-- is not something likely to gain approval from the suits in Time magazine's head office.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Mon 6:56 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (3) | More Confused Americans for Truth | Tags: conservative cowboy diplomacy Iran Iraq Morning Coffee North Korea Saddam Hussein skepticism Time magazine

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Tracked on July 10, 2006 11:22 PM

Comments

Posted by: Darrell at July 11, 2006 1:48 PM

Posted by: Blandly Urbane at July 12, 2006 8:39 AM

Posted by: Ferdy at July 12, 2006 11:20 PM

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