TIME: Cowboy Diplomacy and President Bush

Lee Ellis

TIME magazine joins Fox News and David Gergen, Editor of US News and World Report, in another rage of stupidity against President Bush. The new cover of TIME and its headline reads “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy,” while the finer print reads “Why the Bush Doctrine no longer guides the foreign policy of the Bush Administration.”

A Fox news anchor and David Gergen were agreeing with TIME a few days ago on how the President has had to change his policy (of unilateral attacks to one of diplomacy) from what he had done in Iraq three years ago. They imply that his current way of dealing with North Korea is a result of his failure to maintain a strong coalition in Iraq and to have been able to get out quickly. They seem to think that because he listed North Korea as one of the nations in the “Axis of Evil,” three years ago, he should treat it in the same manner as he did Iraq. Not to do so now, means to them that it was the wrong decision then.

What nonsense. What typical media “either/or” thinking presented by today’s media! No wonder On Site Internet News is attracting more readers while many news magazines and main stream newspapers are losing circulation. No wonder Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are doing so well.

No US President should ever apply one doctrine to all nations, especially as times change. If he or she did, that president should be impeached.

North Korea’s behavior, for example, affects its neighbors, especially South Korea, China, and Japan, much more than it affects us. Its missiles could quickly destroy entire cities in those countries far more quickly than any in the U.S. Why should we use our extremely expensive military power to combat Kim Jong-il, when, in this case, working with his most affected neighbors makes more sense? Jong-il has kept his country completely uninformed and has used his people’s money for his own lavish life style while they starve to death, relying on donated food and medicine from other nations around the world.

Saddam Hussein was similar in many ways, but his neighbors were willing to live with his dictatorship because their main hatred was towards Israel, not towards Iraq. These Middle East countries all wanted to help Iraq gain nuclear power because they envisioned a combination of Israel and the United States as their true enemies. Also, many thought that if the United States ever established a free society or democracy in the heart of the Middle East, this taste of freedom would be so contagious it would spread like wildfire across the Middle East. The Mullahs and other leaders could not risk losing their grip on their people.

Many media people seem to forget that, in 2003, President Bush had gone to the United Nations first to try to get it to do something about Iraq, perhaps enforcing some of the 16 resolutions that Saddam had repeatedly ignored over the years. Only when this diplomacy failed were we forced to take the only possible action left to us to keep Iraq from fueling and financing terrorism around the world as it had been doing for years. We also had to keep Iraq from building a nuclear bomb which could have destroyed Israel and possibly our East Coast. And contrary to what the editors of Time would have us believe, we did not take unilateral action. We built a coalition of many countries to join us in the military liberation of Iraq.

As Winston Churchill once said, “The only permanent thing in the world is change.” I am reminded of a motto once used in one of the books authored by Wendell Johnson, a former professor of General Semantics from Iowa State in Ames, Iowa. He wrote, in 1946, “The only time a difference makes a difference is when it really makes a difference."

President Bush has the ability to recognize these two important factors of life. The editors of Time, along with their media supporters, unfortunately, have never understood what Mr. Churchill and Professor Johnson meant. Pity!

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Lee Ellis is a retired journalist and narrator, formerly with both CBS and Gannett (USA Weekend). He was also a combat veteran of WWII, having fought in the South Pacific invasions. He had the pleasure of interviewing Ronald Reagan as an actor and then later working to help him become Governor of California. At the age of 80, he is keeping busy writing and doing free lance narrations for radio and television. He is an active member of Rotary and the VFW.

indiolee@dc.rr.com