Old Media in Push to Paint Bush Administration as Militaristic Part I

It seems to me that the Old Media is engaged in a near orchestrated effort to tarnish the Bush administration as out-of-control militaristic and autocratic. With the resignation of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice’s assumption of that position, the Old Media is in panic mode. For as much as they fear the conservatives on moral issues — last week’s Old Media complaint of the week — they are even more fearful of what they perceive to be President Bush’s neoconservative warmongering. The Associated Press is starting to show this concern in its headlines and talking heads, such as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, are noticeably out of sorts with recent developments and conclusions they draw from them.

An AP story hot of the wires is titled, “Bush Names Hawkish Rice Top U.S. Diplomat.” What business does a so-called objective news source like AP have politicizing its headlines with such subjective words as “hawkish?” Colin Powell has probably been the Old Media’s favorite part of the administration team — which isn’t saying much — because they have seem him as somewhat of a maverick, or at the very least independent. He was more the diplomat than the war hawk. (That’s why they were really perplexed when Secretary Powell was such an ardent advocate for the War in Iraq when he spoke at the U.N. And while I’m talking about Powell, I might mention that while the Left is currently eulogizing Powell, it cannot be denied that when they accused President Bush of lying about WMD to get us into the war with Iraq, they were necessarily condemning Secretary Powell, who was a major player in that effort).

That said, they still always believed that Powell was less odious than other members of the administration, such as the reviled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the malevolent Vice President Dick Cheney. But President Bush is the guy who came up with the Bush Doctrine, the Axis of Evil, and the preemption doctrine. He’s the one who made the final call on attacking Iraq. And guess who his foreign policy mentor is? Ah yes. Condoleezza Rice. Therefore, without any further inquiry, Condi is presumed the hawk of hawks, the warmonger of warmongers, the American bully of American bullies, the grand imperialist. With Powell’s resignation and Condi’s ascension at State, the libs fear a double-dose of trouble. Condi, after all, is not just Dubyah’s war-making mentor, she is also, in an ironic role reversal, Dubyah’s yes lady and she, unlike Powell, will do exactly what the president commands. No more diplomacy at state. No more nods toward multilateralism. State, like Defense, has been given over to the neoconservative bad boys and girls who are poised for international mischief and war games around the globe.

I’m off to pick up my daughter from dance. More on this a little later this evening in Part II, including some things I heard on Chris Matthews’ Hardball tonight.