http://slate.msn.com/id/2077674/ In the present case of Iraq, a cowboy would have overruled the numerous wimps and faint hearts who he somehow appointed to his administration and would have evinced loud scorn for the assemblage of sissies and toadies who compose the majority of the United Nations. Instead, Bush has rejoined UNESCO, paid most of the U.S. dues to the U.N., and returned repeatedly to the podium of the organization in order to recall it to its responsibility for existing resolutions. While every amateur expert knows that weather conditions for an intervention in the Gulf will start to turn adverse by the end of next month, he has extended deadline after deadline. He has not commented on the eagerness of the media to print every injunction of caution and misgiving from State Department sources. The Saudis don't want the United States to use the base it built for the protection of "the Kingdom"? Very well, build another one in a state that welcomes the idea. Do the Turks and Jordanians want to have their palms greased before discovering what principles may be at stake? Greased they will be. In a way, this can be described as "a drive to war." But only in a way. It would be as well described as a decided insistence that confrontation with Saddam Hussein is inevitable—a proposition that is relatively hard to dispute from any standpoint.
I think Bush sees himself as a great moral crusador. Morals and Cowboys don't usually go together. Just ask Nate Newton.
Just so ... Cowboy in this instance emphasizes (1) Bush as the American who knows nothing about foreign places and (2) his willingness to shoot-from-the-hip, whether its tax cuts, war in Iraq or creating a humungous big Homeland Security bureacracy. But he's got a ranch in Texas so the imperfect Cowboy metaphor comes with the range scrub.
The outline of every Christopher Hitchens article ever written: 1. Emphasize how smart and clever I am. 2. Point out several irrelevant facts. Do so in a meandering sort of way. Pretend these are all part of a theme. 3. Say something sarcastic about anybody who is not me. Do so in a way that makes others look not as smart as me. 4. Conclude with a pithy statement that makes it seem as though I possess some innate knowledge that others do not. His articles are usually much better when he follows Rule #5, typically only observed in his Vanity Fair editorials. 5. Be sure your article immediately follows pictures of hot supermodels, is interrupted by photo spreads of hot models, and concludes on a page facing a picture of a hot supermodel.
If he wasn't at least part cowboy (of the kind seen in "Giant") we wouldn't be going to war. But if he was all cowboy, we would have had a war already before Saddam had a chance to build defenses and dynamite the oil wells. Then he would have Saddam's chemical weapons to show the world to pipe down the feeble and late cry of outrage. He is showing that he is a Yale boy. After a brief burst of cowboy feeling, he has gone back to his ivy league ways. Every decision he has made has been the wrong one and the slow one (which is even worse than being wrong in this case). And what does he have to show for it? Popular opinion in the US is only 50-50, the world is against him, and he has no support in the UN.
I would like to point out that there is absolutely nothing in Bush's background that would make him a cowboy by any stretch of the imagination. He was born in Conneticut. He attended a prep boarding school in Mass. The ten years he spent in Texas as a child, he lived in the city. He doesn't live on a ranch in Crawford, but a fucking mesquite orchard. And he lets his dog ride in the cab of the pickup with him.
Let's compare and contrast: LBJ - Born in Texas. Went to Southwest Texas State Teachers College. Owned a ranch in the Hill Country. Actual cattle live there. Shrub - Born in Connecticut. Went to Yale. Owns a ranch near, uh, Waco. No known bovine inhabitants. If you ask me, there's only been one Texan elected to the White House. I'll bet that there isn't a single scratch in the bed.
Every kid grew up playing cowboys and indians, Dubya is living a childhood dream, it's just that this time the "indians" aren't Native Americans. [might regret those words later]
Actually, "Native Ameicans" prefered to be called American Indians. NA is the white man's/PC term. And no I don't speak for all American Indians.
Now, now, let's not overindulge in criticism. There was this thing I read--something about glass houses and throwing rocks? No wait--"Let he who is guiltless throw the first stone"? Something like that. Anyway, it should be required reading for every BS poster. Holy Cow! I might need a macro for my response to #1! Ummmm, JP? How do you do that macro thing again? What a minute! I DO possess innate knowledge that others don't! Oh. Ahhhh. Ooops! Man! How does a BS poster get a gig like that? Oh, wait a minute, you don't think ... nah, never mind.
Hey, just because I accuse Hitchens of being pedantic and moralizing doesn't mean I don't enjoy his articles. I mean after all, there's lots of random trivia and those supermodels.