Pendragon_6
08-15-2006, 08:15 AM
By Roger Aronoff
Time magazine's much-publicized July 17th cover story, "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy," has been viewed as a seminal media effort to capture the transformation of the Bush Administration from a trigger-happy approach in foreign policy to reliance on other nations and the U.N. But a careful analysis shows that Time exaggerated and distorted the facts in order to produce a story that would entice and mislead its readers.
It would be foolish to insist that changes in the Bush foreign policy have not been made. Since Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State, she has clearly been relying more on the bureaucracy, including such figures as Clinton holdover Nicholas Burns, the Undersecretary of State, to make policy.
But it has never been the case that the Bush Administration has been a tough-talking, unilaterally-acting power, short on diplomacy and long on bullying. The cowboy metaphor is designed to create the impression that the Bush Administration has been acting alone, pursuing preemptive wars and presenting non-negotiable demands. Such a charge is designed to hurt the President's party at the polls this November.
In Full
AIM (http://www.aim.org/aim_report/4782_0_4_0_C/)
Time magazine's much-publicized July 17th cover story, "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy," has been viewed as a seminal media effort to capture the transformation of the Bush Administration from a trigger-happy approach in foreign policy to reliance on other nations and the U.N. But a careful analysis shows that Time exaggerated and distorted the facts in order to produce a story that would entice and mislead its readers.
It would be foolish to insist that changes in the Bush foreign policy have not been made. Since Condoleezza Rice became Secretary of State, she has clearly been relying more on the bureaucracy, including such figures as Clinton holdover Nicholas Burns, the Undersecretary of State, to make policy.
But it has never been the case that the Bush Administration has been a tough-talking, unilaterally-acting power, short on diplomacy and long on bullying. The cowboy metaphor is designed to create the impression that the Bush Administration has been acting alone, pursuing preemptive wars and presenting non-negotiable demands. Such a charge is designed to hurt the President's party at the polls this November.
In Full
AIM (http://www.aim.org/aim_report/4782_0_4_0_C/)