The end of the 'Cowboy Era'

The era of "Cowboy Diplomacy" is over, writes Time magazine.

The Bush Doctrine -- "The world's worst regimes will not be allowed to acquire the world's worst weapons" -- is being defied by Iran's Ahmadinejad and North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, with impunity.

The White House seems to have lost interest in its democracy crusade, after free elections advanced the prospects of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas on the West Bank. In Ukraine, the victors of the Orange Revolution have made a mess of things, and the pro-Putin forces are making a comeback

Neither the Afghan war, in its fifth year, nor the Iraq war, in its fourth, goes well. U.S. casualties are not falling, while the death toll among Afghans and Iraqis mounts toward levels where they may have to be described as not simply insurgencies, but civil wars.

America is a spectator in the Palestinian conflict, wringing its hands, but backing Israel as she seeks to starve to death a Hamas that came to power in elections Bush himself sponsored.

What has happened? What has rendered impotent the robust cowboy diplomacy of George W. Bush, a policy of pre-emptive strikes and preventive wars, of crusades for global democracy and ridding the world of tyrants, a policy declared in his "axis-of-evil" address and Second Inaugural?

Patrick J. Buchanan