Portrait of George W. Bush as a Cowboy

Portrait of George W. Bush as a Cowboy,
or: America's Foreign Policy of Peace

(Warning: This is a rant and may not be
good for your mental health)

Old myths die hard as they say in the
American West, and perhaps no lie is
as captivating as the romance of the
American Cowboy. Talk about a sacred cow
that lives on in Texas. What I want to
know is how George W. Blue-blood Bush
has spun his identity to the point
where we believe him when he says his
preference is “home on the range”
rather than commander-in-chief.” Karl
Rove, his trusty genius-in-residence,
actually said, “Given the choice of
Wall Street over Main Street, the
President would choose Main Street
every time.” Yup, he's just a regular
‘ole guy in a Stetson and levis who
just happens to live in The White House.

He is a man who wears a Stetson and levis
with a relentless appetite for war..
Yee-haw! Ride e'm cowboy,
all the way to Iraq.
Forgive me, but that's what it feels
like every day in the USA, where
conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh
tells his viewers to “relax, we'll get
our war” as he called the anti-war
demonstrations anti-American demonstrations
fueled by communists and environmental
wackos. Never mind that freedom of speech
is a tenet of American democracy or that
dissent is what this country was founded
on in the first place. Bush and his
conservative army of listeners wants blood,
not ours, but theirs. And theirs
is no longer Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda,
but rather Saddam Hussein and Iraqi
dissidents who are a more stable target,
not prone to hiding in caves or
shape shifting. We want to show what
we've got by way of military prowess,
in case the world has forgotten.

Just the other day, Dan Rather exposed
the latest military scheme called
“Shock and Awe,” a strategy developed
with the hopes it would “have this
simultaneous effect rather like the
nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not
taking days or weeks but minutes”
to destroy the enemy. 300 to 400
cruise missiles would be deployed
at once, more than the number launched
during the entire 40 days of the
first Gulf War. “The sheer size of
this has never been seen before,
never been contemplated before,”
a Pentagon official said. “There
will be not be a safe place in Baghdad,”
“The horror and destruction will be
so vast and fast it will inspire nothing
but shock and awe.” Within minutes,
blood-soaked handkerchiefs will be waving
from the rubble begging for mercy,
and then presto, the war will be over.
Nice and neat, clap the dust off our hands.
In and out, mission accomplished.

One lariat thrown around the neck of
Saddam Hussein, and it's the end of the
rodeo. George W. Bush will wave his white
hat to the crowd as he takes a bow from
the saddle of his fast-riding horse in
the middle of the arena.

“Shock and awe.” Read all about it.
Barrel riders secure the Iraqi oil
for themselves in record time.

It is time to expose the myth of the
American Cowboy for what it is, a lie
designed to perpetuate the rugged loner
who takes the law into his own hands.
It doesn't matter if in truth, he's just
a hired hand of the people who pay him.
Or that his real home is not on the range,
but simply moving through with no sense
of responsibility to the folks who live there.
What matters is that he can speak in simple
verse and smoke his Marlboro cigarettes
with style at the same time he rides off
into the sunset with his silver pistols
lashed to his thighs as he feels his
trustworthy horse between his legs.
Bodies left behind or broken fences
never mended don't trouble him. He is
the perfect image for American
individualism. Take what's yours
and move on.

Of course we can “go it alone,”
says George W. to the increasing
world-wide opposition to war in Iraq.
That's the American way. “You're either
with us or against us.” As the president
so eloquently said, “I don't do nuance.”

The cowboy president doesn't talk details,
he just points his pistol in the general
direction of fear and starts shooting
off his rhetoric like those three quick
bullets, “Axis of Evil,” that were heard
around the world. North Korea flashes
news of nuclear weapons and then it's our
turn to reply that our missiles are bigger
than their missiles and now it's no longer
rodeo time, but Super Bowl Sunday, with
the United States Cowboy on the starting
line with George as quarterback, his arm
cocked and ready for a military touchdown.

George W. Bush loves a good game.
The problem is -- war is not a game.
And for those of us who do not view
this man as our legitimate president,
how do we get his attention?

I used to think democracy was a good place
to start, but since September 11,
and the creation of the new Department
of Homeland Security, our civil liberties
are being whittled and eroded away.
Our voices raised in question are
discredited and quelled. Fear has
replaced reason. Confrontation has
overruled contemplation. Entitlement
has replaced respect as we watch
environmental laws slashed and sensitive
wildlands ravaged for their oil
and ancient trees in the name of national
security. The "war on terror" is first
being waged here at home.

To those of you living in Europe, we
thank you for your leadership of resistance.
We thank you for gathering in the hundreds
of thousands in London, Florence, Madrid,
and Paris, showing us what is possible
and inspiring our own demonstrations.
And our numbers in the anti-war movement
in America are growing. We thank you
for crying foul on what we Americans
have only dared to think to ourselves
until now. And we thank you for your
prayers and we pray with you believing
there is a "conservative compassion"
that can stay the violence of war.
What we are learning from you is
that those with a memory of war
on their own soil are the first
to call for patience and pause...

Perhaps, it will continue to be
this kind of pressure from countries
with a memory of fascism and a
history of empires that have risen
and fallen, that in the end will
remind our cowboy culture in America
that the poster with burnt edges,
“Wanted Dead or Alive,” has never
translated well in international law.
America right now, under the Bush Regime,
has a very destructive, call it foreign,
policy for peace.

What I fear in America right now is this:
War is the body bag flown home with a nice
note from the president that reads,
“She served our country well in the
fight for freedom.” War is also amnesia,
so that in the grief of that moment,
Americans will choose to believe him
and find ourselves imprisoned
by our own arrogance.



-- Terry Tempest Williams

Posted over on Poets Against the War