I don't think President Bush is a cowboy, after all. I think he's a chess master. He hasn't been riding the range these past few months making arguments about why we should invade Iraq. He's been lining some saps up for checkmate.
Ask yourself this about the cowboy Bush: if you wanted all your friends to help you out, would you ask for their help and maybe get a "no"... or just say you don't need help, and then let them foam at the mouth at how awful it is you don't need or want or ask for help. Later, when you decide to ask for the help, you find your friends so grateful you asked, they fall all over themselves to say, "Sure we'll help. Glad to."
President Bush has now worked this trick with both the U.S. Congress and the U.N. — with the exception of Senate Democrats, who seem determined to oppose something the rest of the country and the world fervently wants.
How would you like to be the U.S. senator who is arguing against toppling Saddam Hussein while at the same moment, the foreign minister of France is committing the French Foreign Legion to the fight?
How do you say "egg on face" in French?
One thing I'd agree with Bush's critics on... we do need help in this war for the day after the fighting stops. I don't want to see American peacekeepers in Iraq. You might as well send them to war wearing a bulls-eye on their backs.
Peacekeeping, nation-building... that's the stuff for the Swedes and the French and the Danes. They can do God's work, and not be blamed for all the wreckage.
That's My Word.
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