Elephantstrunk

Absurdly named Max Boot exhibits genuine extremism in this rapidly aging article. By extremism I mean the automatic assumption that the failure of X to solve a problem is caused by not enough X.

This startling claim:

The problem is not, as so many have it, that President Bush’s “cowboy diplomacy” has unsettled the region’s vaunted stability. It is that Bush hasn’t been enough of a cowboy.

is supported by this one:

Syrian strongman Bashar Assad appeared to be down for the count when a U.N. investigation found evidence linking his regime to the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. But Bush let him get up off the mat. Senior U.S. officials keep proclaiming that Syria’s support for terrorism is unacceptable, but by not doing more to stop it, they have tacitly accepted it.

Couldn’t he have said “Syrian dentist Bashar Assad”? Or “leader of precariously balanced Syria Bashar Assad”?

Amazingly he gets published in the FT.