I woke to a text message on my phone and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I did a little reading on some of the feeds I’ve set up on my Bloglines account, and I got stuck on one post and the comments that were posted in response to it.
Over at Gweilo Diaries, Conrad is of the opinion that “Gloria Arroyo has no Balls”. He writes:
In a craven display of spinelessness, demonstrating that it is not a serious nation and guaranteed to put the lives of its citizens in future danger, the Philippine government released the following statement yesterday…
The statement details what we all know about: that the Phillippine contingent is pulling out of Iraq.
I’ve written an extensive comment there, some of which relates to other comments in the thread, but I’ll restate the basis of my main argument about this “no balls” notion here.
I’m springboarding off a comment someone named Tony made, claiming that Bush Junior is a “cowboy” and that he thinks it’s actually a good thing:
Uh, Tony.
I think the point you’re missing is that the model of the “cowboy” you’re talking about is incompatible with the role a democratically elected leader needs to play.
You don’t need a cowboy for a President. That’s why the cowboy usually isn’t the sherriff. That’s why he is a wandering loner: he tends to make a mess of any situation he stays around in for too long.
And let me remind you, the cowboy is a fantasy. You know what most cowboys were? They were poorly-paid Black, Indian, and Hispanic cattle-wranglers who took the job that any White who could avoid, avoided. The Hollywood cowboy is a pure fantasy, a creation of the cinematic imagination — just like the scary Indians of the same movies, who in real life were rather easily decimated as far as colonized populations go.
Moreover, the cowboy is a figure that seems almost designed for adolescent males, or for the part of adult males that remains adolescent. The cowboy is not well understood by those around him. He had dark secrets. He uses a great deal of violence, skilfully deployed, because (he believes) it is necessary. And so he gets the chance to blast the shit out of people using his guns. He is unconnected to others (the adolescent would-be rebel’s wet dream), and he is, invariably, “the good guy”. Realistically, it sounds as if every cowboy story is the story as told by a self-romanticizing idealist thug.
So what does it mean when mass numbers of people back someone who fits this model, by their own admission? It means something is very deeply wrong.
And by the way, you know why America’s entrance into the war was so significant? Because America was the only place with any resources left to throw into the war. Before you start criticizing others for not backing your “wartime” efforts, remember that when a much more clear and certain (ie. non-fabricated) threat loomed over Europe, the rest of the Allies may have dallied for some time, but by 1939 they had begun fighting the battle that took you lot so bloody long to get off your asses to join.
And you dare criticize people for not immediately jumping to back you in a war that is, by anyone’s standards, so much more weakly justified. While Europe burned, Roosevelt said, “We shun political commitments which might entangle us In foreign wars…If we face the choice of profits or peace-this nation must answer, the nation will answer