Is Bush A Cowboy?
An article over at Slate tries to answer the question, Why France Hates Us. The article basically argues that publically opposing (nearly) everything the US does is what keeps France inside the power circle.
I actually managed to not watch the State of the Union Address last night. Its the first one I've missed in a few years, but I tend to get so wrapped up in politics around the presidential elections that I feel I need to distance myself from it during the off years. Paying too close attention to it just gets me to angry.
Another Hitchens article, this time he argues that Bush is not the 'cowboy' he's portrayed at by the left. He also gets some shots in at France while he's at it. To have had three planeloads of kidnapped civilians crashed into urban centers might have brought out a touch of the cowboy even in Adlai Stevenson. But Bush waited almost five weeks before launching any sort of retaliatory strike. And we have impressive agreement among all sources to the effect that he spent much of that time in consultation. A cowboy surely would have wanted to do something dramatic and impulsive (such as to blow up at least an aspirin-factory in Sudan) in order to beat the chest and show he wasn't to be messed with. But it turns out that refined Parisians are keener on such "unilateral" gestures—putting a bomb onboard the Rainbow Warrior, invading Rwanda on the side of the killers, dispatching French troops to the Ivory Coast without a by-your-leave, building a reactor for Saddam Hussein, and all the rest of it.
This 'not a cowboy' meme gets stronger with the Taranto entry poking fun at the left's continued use of the term 'Rush to War'. Is it really a rush to war if they've been making the rush claim for so many months now? By the time the liberation of Iraq begins in earnest, perhaps a month from now, critics of the Bush administration will have spent at least six months complaining about the "rush to war." But half a year's preparation is no rush; it's more of a saunter.
Saunter eh - isn't that something a cowboy does?
I actually managed to not watch the State of the Union Address last night. Its the first one I've missed in a few years, but I tend to get so wrapped up in politics around the presidential elections that I feel I need to distance myself from it during the off years. Paying too close attention to it just gets me to angry.
Another Hitchens article, this time he argues that Bush is not the 'cowboy' he's portrayed at by the left. He also gets some shots in at France while he's at it. To have had three planeloads of kidnapped civilians crashed into urban centers might have brought out a touch of the cowboy even in Adlai Stevenson. But Bush waited almost five weeks before launching any sort of retaliatory strike. And we have impressive agreement among all sources to the effect that he spent much of that time in consultation. A cowboy surely would have wanted to do something dramatic and impulsive (such as to blow up at least an aspirin-factory in Sudan) in order to beat the chest and show he wasn't to be messed with. But it turns out that refined Parisians are keener on such "unilateral" gestures—putting a bomb onboard the Rainbow Warrior, invading Rwanda on the side of the killers, dispatching French troops to the Ivory Coast without a by-your-leave, building a reactor for Saddam Hussein, and all the rest of it.
This 'not a cowboy' meme gets stronger with the Taranto entry poking fun at the left's continued use of the term 'Rush to War'. Is it really a rush to war if they've been making the rush claim for so many months now? By the time the liberation of Iraq begins in earnest, perhaps a month from now, critics of the Bush administration will have spent at least six months complaining about the "rush to war." But half a year's preparation is no rush; it's more of a saunter.
Saunter eh - isn't that something a cowboy does?
# | January 29, 2003