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Part 4

Iraq & A Hard Place Part 3 - 

Myths & Legends: Cowboy Bush

23, 2003 44: AM CST

Another myth deserves dispelling – the myth of President George W. Bush as a cowboy. Quite frankly, I have been unable to determine where this myth even came from originally. President Bush, so the argument goes, has been rushing wildly to war for the last year. Any trained logician should be able to defeat this argument right off the bat by parsing the previous sentence. How can it qualify as a rush to war if it’s taken over a year to happen? However, this argument apparently isn’t enough for some people, and it certainly isn’t satisfying, so let’s further deconstruct the cowboy myth.

Every action that President Bush has taken on the road to Iraq has been inconsistent with the cowboy myth. Bush has been accused of rushing to war with Iraq since December 2001 – yet fourteen months later the invasion hasn’t started. He was accused of exceeding his constitutional authority, but he got Congressional authorization for an attack. He was blasted for unilateralism, but he went to the UN and got a unanimous resolution from the Security Council. In the nearly four months since, Iraq has clearly not complied with that resolution – and yet still Bush seems prepared to go back to the UN one last time.

As a part of the cowboy myth, much has been made of the “unilateral tendencies” of the Bush administration. This is a chicken and egg argument. Nobody supports bush’s plans because they’re unilateral, but they’re only unilateral because nobody supports them. Taking a stand against a unilateral action may be defensible for other reasons, but taking a stand against it because it’s unilateral has no weight.

Part 4