Fool's Folly

[T]he argument needs to be addressed, not because it is not foolish but because it is the fashion among fools. And, as the great political novelist Ross Thomas once pointed out, when you've got all the fools in town on your side, you've practically won.

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A look back on England's efforts to assist American voting efforts in 2004.

Dear Clark County voter, Give us back the America we loved. Yours sincerely, John Le Carré

Just when was it that you loved us? What's with the nostalgia for an age that never existed. The US hasn't felt the love from England's liberal elite since . . . when?

Maybe there's one good reason - just one - for re-electing George W Bush, and that's to force him to live with the consequences of his appalling actions, and answer for his own lies, rather than wish the job on a Democrat who will then get blamed for his predecessor's follies.

Note to John (or David John Moore Cornwell as your birth certificate reads): Bush isn't running for re-election. And not everyone is wishing the job on a Democrat.

Probably no American president in all history has been so universally hated abroad as George W Bush: for his bullying unilateralism, his dismissal of international treaties, his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures, his contempt for institutions of world government, and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war - and now anarchy - upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship, but had no hand in 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction, and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the US in a dirty war against Iran.

Europe was saying much the same thing about Reagan. Europe just can't stand the thought of a conservative US president.

As for his "bullying unilateralism", we had quite a few friends in Iraq with us: United Kingdom 5,500, South Korea 1,200, Poland 1,200, Australia 900, Georgia 850, Romania 605, El Salvador 380, Mongolia 160, Bulgaria 154, Fiji 150, Latvia 12, Albania 120, Czech Republic 99, Azerbaijan 90, Lithuania 60, Tonga 55, Denmark 50, Bosnia and Herzegovina 46, Armenia 46, Ukraine 43, Estonia 40, Macedonia 35, Kazakhstan 27, *Hungary 16, Moldova 11, *Portugal 10, *Italy 8, Slovakia 6, Slovenia 2, Turkey 2, *Netherlands 2, Canada 2, and New Zealand 1. "However will we manage without the Saudi navy?" We'll work it out.

As for Bush's "reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures", let's be clear what nations and cultures we are talking about. Are we talking about the Middle East and Islam? Because if we are, those "aspirations" that John holds so dear are to destroy western culture and install sharia across the world. I'd like to see George Smiley walking around the Circus trying to uncover the location of the infidel that bared her ankles in public the day before.

You are voting in November. We will vote next year. Yet the outcome in both countries will in large part depend on the same question: how long can the lies last now that the truth has finally been told? The Iraq war was planned long before 9/11. Osama provided the excuse. Iraq paid the price. American kids paid the price. British kids paid the price. Our politicians lied to us.

I'm sure the Department of Defense was running war game scenarios on Iraq before 9/11. At least I hope so. Saddam had gassed his own people, invaded his neighbors four times, publicly and frequently declared his intention to develop nuclear weapons, acted on those intentions, violated every UN Resolution repeatedly and mockingly, continued to fire on a daily basis at our planes, refused to allow UN inspectors to do their job, and the list goes on.

While Bush was waging his father's war at your expense, he was also ruining your country. He made your rich richer and your poor and unemployed more numerous. He robbed your war veterans of their due and reduced your children's access to education. And he deprived more Americans than ever before of health care. Now he's busy cooking the books, burying deficits and calling in contingency funds to fight a war that his advisers promised him he could light and put out like a candle.

A few bits of information about the US, John. First, statistics show that the middle class is smaller than when Bush entered office because more people have moved to the upper economic class. The lower economic eschelon has remained the same.

Unemployment. Here are the figures for the past 15 plus years to give you an idea. 1991 - 6.8%, 1992 - 7.5%, 1993 - 6.9%, 1994 - 6.1%, 1995 - 5.6%, 1996 - 5.4%, 1997 - 4.9%, 1998 - 4.5%, 1999 - 4.2%, 2000 4.0%, 2001 - 4.7%, 2002 - 5.8, 2003 - 6.0%, 2004 - 5.5 and skip to 2007 - 5.0 (the only figure I could find). Not exactly earth shattering, but don't let facts bother you.

Education is a state issue. President Bush has no power to tell children they can't go to school. The only lousy action he's taken toward education is the education bill he passed with the assistance of liberal favorite, Ted Kennedy. And Bush is not taking money away from veterans.

Exactly how has Bush deprived Americans of healthcare? More children are covered since Bush took office. But there has been a decrease in coverage for adults, generally those between the ages of 19 and 29. Who are these people? Illegal aliens. More than 85% of the increase in uninsureds is due to people who are not in this country legally anyway! And that is just the increase. Illegals make up 43% of the total uninsureds to begin with.

Take a look at the states with the largest segment of the uninsured population: Texas, California, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona - all states with the highest percentage of illegals. Bush actually scrambled to give these illegal immigrants amnesty and a lovely introductory gift basket with all sort of perks, and the American people had a fit. But again, these are just facts. Don't let them get in the way of a good story.

Meanwhile, your Patriot Act has swept aside constitutional and civil liberties which took brave Americans 200 years to secure, and were once the envy of a world that now looks on in horror, not just at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but at what you are doing to yourselves.

There's nothing I like more than being patronized. Le Carre has been reading too many of his own novels and is swept away in drama. We Americans can't leave our homes without retinal scans and hidden cameras tracing our every move - oh, wait, that's Europe.

Look, I'll take the Patriot Act any day if it can prevent another 3,000 Americans from being murdered at the behest of a suicidal cult bent on destroying our way of life. I'll take it if it can prevent the US from looking like Britain, France or the Netherlands where radical extremism is permitted to flourish - even nurtured - until it is so pervasive and entrenched that it becomes the predominant culture.

But please don't feel isolated from the Europe you twice saved. Give us back the America we loved, and your friends will be waiting for you. And here in Britain, for as long as we have Tony Blair singing the same lies as George Bush, your nightmares will be ours.

Here is the scary thing, John. Europe's going to need our assistance again soon, and I don't know that we'll be able to help you. It's what you are doing to yourselves, and it is a nightmare.