The End of Cowgirl Diplomacy
Commentary by Greg Lewis / NewMediaJournal.US
July 12, 2006
Ann Coulter was once heard to remark that "There
are no liberal men, only big hairy liberal women." That's one possible
explanation for why Democrats, during the 1990s, exercised what might
well be called Cowgirl Diplomacy.
If President Bush has indeed been
practicing Cowboy Diplomacy, as a recent Time Magazine cover story ("The
End of Cowboy Diplomacy") suggests, then let's be thankful at least
that his predecessor's diplomatic strategy of ignoring threats from Islamist
terrorists and rogue nuclear states has finally come to an end. And let's
also be thankful that Time has missed the mark again: Cowboy Diplomacy
is alive and well and being practiced by the Bush and Olmert administrations.
It's difficult to say precisely when
the preferred Democrat policy of Cowgirl Diplomacy ended and Bush's Cowboy
Diplomacy began. The 9/11 attacks, which were in hindsight certainly among
the predictable outcomes of Clinton's "cowgirl" approach to
international terrorism, represent without doubt the turning point. Two
months later, in December of 2001, President Bush notified Russia that
the U.S. was withdrawing from the 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty,
one of whose points of agreement was that the United States would not
defend itself against incoming enemy ballistic missiles, not that there
is likely to be any other kind. So "Goodbye Cowgirl Diplomacy in
the sand," with apologies to Neil Young.
Democrats are doing everything they
can to keep Cowgirlism alive. With regard to what's going on in Iraq,
they're advocating that America should cash in its chips and withdraw
altogether from that conflict, preferably immediately, but, if not, then
at least according to a schedule that will enable al Qaeda and other terrorist
organizations currently forced to engage western democracy militarily
in Iraq to pace themselves, knowing there is a declared end in sight for
them in the Middle East.
Democrat Congressman John Murtha
has recently carried Cowgirl Diplomacy to new heights, suggesting that
America is the "greatest threat to world peace" on the planet
today. Not only does Murtha recommend that we retreat from the war that
Islamist terrorists have declared on our country and which we have taken
to them through our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, he now asserts
that it is not Islamist terrorism (nor North Korean or Iranian nuclear
capabilities) that present an imminent threat to global peace, but that
the United States is the "real" culprit.
Murtha's pronouncements, while absurd
to any thinking human, would seem to be manna to the hard left that has
emerged as the voice of the Democrat Party in recent months, but they
are in fact nothing less than a death knell to Democrats' hopes of winning
back a majority in the House of Representatives in the upcoming Congressional
elections. Not even bothering to mention Iraq as one of the issues on
which the party will campaign in the fall will be seen to be a fatal oversight,
one which the American electorate will not fail to take note of.
But it's not only in their insistence
that we need to withdraw from the now-global war against Islamist terrorism
that Democrats demonstrate their utter lack of any grasp on the international
diplomatic situation. Granted, that situation is becoming more and more
complex with every passing week, but a political party that insists it's
grown up enough to deal with international diplomacy issues has got to
do better than Dems have.
We face on several fronts apparent
threats, not only to our own country and way of life, but to western democracy
as it is practiced in the U.S., Israel, and Old and New Europe. North
Korea seems determined to pout its way onto the international stage by
launching missiles to attack water. While many have asserted that Kim
and his cronies "learned a great deal" from their failed missile
test, in fact, the reality seems to be that they'll need about 17 more
such failures before they'll learn enough to even begin to present a truly
credible nuclear threat to the U.S. mainland.
Wack as the pipsqueak North Korean
dictator is, he would be signing his regime's death warrant by even attempting
to attack us or one of our allies, particularly Japan. Indeed, one wonders
what his (and the UN's) reaction would be if the U.S. and Japan staged
"joint" missile trials in North Korea's offshore waters, with
the missiles launched from a U.S. submarine, for example.
The stated "fear" of the
international diplomatic community is that Kim would unleash his 1.1 million
man infantry on South Korea if we or our allies dared to flex our military
muscles within missile-shot of his impoverished and beleaguered citizenry.
Conventional wisdom is that we'd better not risk such an event by, for
instance, taking out North Korean missiles on the launchpad. To do so
would bring down the wrath of Kim on our ally to his immediate south.
That may well be true. But it's not
a good reason not to take out Kim's missiles on the launchpad. The fact
is that preemptively disrupting the recent North Korean missile tests
would have served no useful purpose. While it's galling to let the international
community draw the conclusion that Kim "one-upped" us with his
in-your-face Fourth-of-July tests, we need to simply shrug off the intended
insult as inconsequential.
For that is precisely what Kim Jong
Il's regime is in the grand scheme of things: inconsequential. And in
the aforementioned grand scheme, that term also aptly describes the Iranian
regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While Ahmadinejad is certainly posturing
like a banty rooster, and while he is certifiably insane, the fact is
that his potential nuclear capability is very easily deterred: I have
no doubt that with two days' worth of targeted air strikes, the Israeli
military could delay Iran's achieving "nuclear" status by as
much as a decade, if not cripple it altogether.
While terrorist regimes are certainly
threats that cannot be ignored, they are abetted by the policies of many
of our "allies." There is a palpable hatred of the United States
being fomented among the socialistically-inclined people of Old Europe.
With Tony Blair relegated to lame duck status in Great Britain, and with
Silvio Berlusconi out of power in Italy, only Angela Merkel stands among
the leaders of these European countries as a friend of our President.
Vladimir Putin, into whose soul Bush
has asserted he had a glimpse, finding therein an ally . . . well, Putin
has problems of his own. It seems that Democracy is a somewhat recalcitrant
entity to try to control in any way the KGB-bred Putin is familiar with.
It further seems that Putin has discovered
that U.S. interests might not be compatible with Russia's. Putin stands
to gain nothing if we're successful in overcoming the forces of international
terrorism; in fact, it appears to be in Russia's best interests that America
continue to have to spend its military resources fighting one significant
war and several other skirmishes against terrorism.
By accusing Bush of "Cowboy
Diplomacy," Time Magazine seems to want to paint him broadly as someone
who "shoots first and asks questions later." Nothing could be
further from the truth. Bush exercised remarkable restraint in the runup
to the invasion of Iraq, as witness the dozens of UN resolutions that
were implemented prior to the time our actually putting some teeth into
them became necessary.
One is reminded of the wonderful
1980 film, "The Stunt Man," in which the guy who actually performs
the stunts attributed to the film's star is described as the star's "cock
and balls." In this light, it's no wonder the Left (and its surrogate,
the UN) can't understand the so-called "Cowboy Diplomacy" they
categorically (and ignorantly) reject. As Ann Coulter might say, "What
do they know about cock and balls?"
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