Cowboy Bush Has a Corporate Agenda

William Schneider’s open admiration for President Bush’s cowboy diplomacy is nauseating (Opinion, Feb. 24). Rather than trying to convince us that the “axis of evil” reference appears to be working and that the axis is running scared, he should look more critically at the fallout of this remark. All the members of the “axis” did was to return words with words. They succeeded in looking accommodating while we looked like bullies spoiling for a fight. If the “axis” reference was such a big part of Bush’s diplomacy, I submit he would not have backpedaled as he did in the face of angry demonstrations on his visit to South Korea.

No, the reality is simpler: Bush needed to create the backdrop of a larger, different terror to justify his huge defense budget. It doesn’t take a learned political analyst to figure out that loyalty to its corporate sponsors is this administration’s first priority.

Sridhar Subramanian

Santa Barbara

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I would be more impressed by Schneider’s puffery if his hero were not a transparent phony. Bin Laden and 15 of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis. The money that supported them came primarily from the Saudis. It is a corrupt and repressive regime that emphatically does not believe in democracy. All this, supposedly, defines our evil enemies.

If Dubya were an honest man, he would have included Saudi Arabia in his foolish axis. Yet he has not shaken a finger at the Saudis, much less rattled a saber.

We all know why. This is a government of, by and for the oil-igarchy. Its members believe that what is good for Enron is good for the U.S., and they hope they can keep the war going long enough to drain us all dry.

Dean Hiser

Orange

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Were they alive today, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and even Leon Trotsky would snicker at Schneider’s contention that Ronald Reagan’s aggressive cowboy rhetoric was instrumental in the demise of communism in the Soviet Union, or that Bush’s current bombast might bring positive results today vis-a-vis Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The historical change that brought death to the doctrine of a classless society in the former Soviet Union was the utter scorn of, and rejection by, the proletariat itself.

Bert Winthrop

Los Angeles