"The London Streets"

"If they had bothered to look closely at what has been going on in Britain, they would have seen that the country has been engulfed by a rising hysteria about the US and Bush: an irrationality and complete breakdown in logic, common sense and moral reasoning from 9/11 onwards which has created the ugliest, most prejudiced and most dangerous national mood that I can ever remember." (Melanie Phillips)

News and commentary on Bush's state visit to Britain.

November 2003
"He can talk. What a surprise" (Stephen Pollard, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/11/23)
"Unlike JFK's war, Bush fights for Iraqi liberty" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2003/11/23)
"Bush visit ends with pub and protests" (The Guardian, 2003/11/21)
"Real Bush 'At Odds with Media Caricature'" (Chris Moncrieff, PA/Scotsman.com, 2003/11/21)
"I Bought The Guardian Today - So You Don't Have To" (Scott Burgess, The Daily Ablution, 2003/11/21)
"Numbers Racket" (Denis Boyles, National Review, 2003/11/21)
"Trafalgar Square" (David Frum, National Review, 2003/11/21)
"The Great Divide" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2003/11/21)
"A millionaire marcher among the anarchists" (Stephen Robinson, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/21)
"An effigy of U.S. President George W. Bush..." (Reuters/David Bebber, 2003/11/20)
"'Bush, Blair, CIA..How many kids did you kill today?'" (David Carr, Samizdata.net, 2003/11/20)
"Bush Opponents Stage Protest in London" (Jane Wardell, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/11/20)
"Bush turns Europe's consensus on its head" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/20)
"Remarks by the President at Whitehall Palace" (The White House, 2003/11/19)
"Low turn-out for anti-Bush protests" (Ananova, 2003/11/19)
"An anti-Bush protester shouts..." (AFP/Jim Watson, 2003/11/19)
"Why this protest is deeply shameful" (David Frum, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/19)
"Twaddle from the Axis of Neville" (Austin Bay, Strategy Page, 2003/11/19)
"Bush in London" (David Warren, Ottawa Citizen/DavidWarrenOnline, 2003/11/19)
"If it weren't for America, you wouldn't be free to protest" (Victor Davis Hanson, The Times/Benador Associates, 2003/11/18)
"The London Streets" (Amir Taheri, National Review, 2003/11/18)
"'I hate you'" (Harry Hatchet, Harry's Place, 2003/11/18)
"It's 'peace' psychosis in a nut's hell" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/18)
"Livingstone says Bush is 'greatest threat to life on planet'" (Nigel Morris, Independent, 2003/11/18)
"Protests begin but majority backs Bush visit as support for war surges" (Alan Travis and David Gow, The Guardian, 2003/11/18)
"London Calling - Bush, Ambushed" (Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times/andrewsullivan.com, 2003/11/16)
"Why I say welcome" (David Aaronovitch, The Observer, 2003/11/16)
"Bush's visit is Blair's declaration of independence" (Matthew d'Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/11/16)
"All this just for a photograph with the Queen?" (Mark Steyn, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/11/16)
"Pomp and protest" (Sandro Contenta, Toronto Star, 2003/11/16)
"It was a good idea at the time" (Julian Coman et al., The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/11/16)
"Britons Dubious About Bush Ahead of State Visit" (Paul Majendie, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2003/11/15)
"Bush's visit will be expensive, but America has paid many times over" (Tom Utley, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/15)
"U.S. Expats in UK Hit by Wave of 'Anti-Bushism'" (Paul Majendie, Reuters, 2003/11/13)
"The Bush state visit" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2003/11/13)

"He can talk. What a surprise" (Stephen Pollard, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/11/23)
"Would you believe it? Not only can that Texan halfwit speak in proper sentences, he is even capable of reading a good speech and not fluffing his lines. It only goes to show what you can do with a speechwriter and some coaching. The response to President George W Bush's speech on Wednesday has been almost universally (and so typically Britishly) condescending. Few have criticised its content; since it ranks as one of the finest delivered by a visiting leader; that would be a sneer too far. Instead, reaction has been surprise, either feigned or genuine, that he managed to speak for so long, so well.
Mary Dejevsky, writing in The Independent, was typical: "Whoever has been coaching George Bush in oratory deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom (and a congratulatory glass of champagne)." Almost the entire British chattering class seems to be animated by the same deep-seated contempt for Mr Bush. Even when confronted by the evidence of their own eyes and ears, that he is a thoughtful, charming, convincing, eloquent, intelligent, forceful leader, they cannot bring themselves to believe that he is as he seems."

"Unlike JFK's war, Bush fights for Iraqi liberty" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2003/11/23)
"All that stands between an Islamist nutcase and Pakistan's nukes is General Musharraf and the handful of chaps he trusts. Ultimately, it's not enough - as the general understands. It's easier to organize a coup than to create the institutions of liberty, but the latter are the only real bulwark against the horrors of the age.
It would be nice to think the so-called "progressives" of the left might find this a worthy project. Instead, in London, they waved their silly placards showing Bush and Blair drenched in blood, even as the real blood of the British consul-general and others had been spilled in Turkey that day.
It's one thing to dislike Bush, it's one thing to hate America. But it's quite another to hate America so much you reflexively take the side of any genocidal psycho who comes along. In their terminal irrelevance, the depraved left has now adopted the old slogan of Cold War realpolitik: like Osama and Mullah Omar, Saddam may be a sonofabitch, but he's their sonofabitch."

"Bush visit ends with pub and protests" (The Guardian, 2003/11/21)
Akhtar is also a political analyst for the BBC: "Protests on the village green, a £1m security operation and a pub lunch today marked the last hours of the US president George Bush's state visit to Britain. ...
Mohammed Akhtar, from Middlesbrough, was in the village as a member of his town's Islamic Society. He said: "All the problems we are facing all over the world have all been created by Mr Bush." ...
One of the children who had met Mr Bush, Stuart Percivil, said: "He shook my hand and put his arm around me. He said 'I am the President of the United States.'"
"He is a very nice man and I don't know why they are saying he is the world's number one terrorist."
On his departure from the north-east, the president posed for photographs with the guard of honour of police officers who had been on duty at the airport throughout the day as he boarded his jet at Teesside airport for the flight home." (Note: Emphasis by me.)

"Real Bush 'At Odds with Media Caricature'" (Chris Moncrieff, PA/Scotsman.com, 2003/11/21)
You don't say: "US President George Bush is "totally at odds" with his media image, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said today.
Mr Campbell, an opponent of the war with Iraq, spoke out on the ePolitix website about his discussions with the President during the state visit.
He said that they discussed directly issues such as Iraq, the Middle East, Guantanamo Bay, Kyoto and trade sanctions.
"He is personally extremely engaging. He has a well-developed sense of humour, is self-deprecating and when he engages in a discussion with you he is warm and concentrates directly on you.
"He looks you straight in the eye and tells you exactly what he thinks."
Mr Campbell, stressing that the President was "totally at odds"with his media image, went on: 'I was not persuaded by what he said, but I was most certainly surprised at the extent to which the caricature of him was inaccurate.'"

"I Bought The Guardian Today - So You Don't Have To" (Scott Burgess, The Daily Ablution, 2003/11/21)
"As a public service, I gritted my teeth and actually bought a copy of The Grauniad this morning, for the first time since the autumn of 2001.
Here's some of what caught my eye:
Simon Hoggart, Guardian sketchwriter and BBC political presenter (Westminster Hour) describes seeing Bush at yesterday's press conference:

I was hypnotised by the movements of his lips. First the upper one clamped over the lower. Then the lower lip opened slightly to the left and, next, to the right. Then the upper lip widened out in a faintly simian way. ...
He looked like a man who has just realised that he had forgotten to take the chewing gum out of his mouth. He can't let on, but is scared he might swallow it, so he tucked it between his teeth and jaw.

It's nice to know that, like World Affairs Editor John "Saddam is a Saint" Simpson, this BBC political presenter is impartial..."

"Numbers Racket" (Denis Boyles, National Review, 2003/11/21)
Effigy II: "The BBC's highly excitable man on the spot, Andy Tighe, got swept up in the fervor of the moment, too. The toppling of the Bush effigy, he said, would be as remarkable an image as the toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad. Then he tried to explain the philosophical implications of the protesters' arguments — summarized nicely today by the BBC who report an organizer saying, "hopefully out of the crowd some ideas will arise" — but instead slipped and started calling Bush a killer. The demonstrators, he said, were a symbol of the alternative to Bush's warlike policies. Unfortunately, somebody in the crowd chose that moment to unfurl a gigantic white flag, no doubt bringing any visiting Frenchmen to their feet to salute." (Note: Boyles also comments on the differing estimates of how large the demonstration was. Scotland Yard said 70,000 while the BBC said 110,000 ("a number completely mystifying until you realize it's the number they needed to give them license to report that the demo had 'exceeded the expectations of the organizers.'"). And here's Aljazeera: "Police estimated the numbers marching at 110,000. But Chris Nineham, a spokesman for the Stop the War Coalition, said that 350,000 had joined the protest." ("Peace protest paralyses London" (Arthur Neslen, Aljazeera.net, 2003/11/21))

"Trafalgar Square" (David Frum, National Review, 2003/11/21)
Effigy I: "Got to give those British protesters credit for this: They sure make their loyalties clear. First they build an effigy of George Bush that equates the leader of American democracy with Saddam Hussein. Then they parody the liberation of Baghdad by pulling their effigy down and stomping on it. Finally, to underscore the point, after the effigy-stomping, they invite to the podium to speak – George Galloway! The British MP accused of accepting some $300,000 in stipends from Saddam himself!"

"The Great Divide" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2003/11/21)
"The second thing that the Bush visit is likely to be remembered for is that it helped draw a clear distinction between two visions of the world.
One vision belongs to those who blame the Western democracies for all the ills of mankind and hate the United States for a variety of reasons. These are people who never protested when Saddam was filling all those mass graves in Iraq or when the Taliban were massacring the Hazara in Bamiyan. You will never see them demanding the release of political prisoners in Cuba itself, but find them crying their hearts out for the al Qaeda operatives held in Guantanamo Bay.
Another vision is defended by those who believe that fighting against tyranny and terror is the fundamental political duty of all human beings, and that the most noble principles are ultimately meaningless unless defended by force if and when necessary.
The Marxist-Islamist alliance may well have done all of us a service this week in London. It has put the fight between open societies and their enemies into focus."

"A millionaire marcher among the anarchists" (Stephen Robinson, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/21)
"No one would admit to being anti-American, even as they rested on their placards showing Mr Bush's name with the slogan: "World's Number One Terrorist."
"I've nothing personally against President Bush," said Wendy Rumsey, a civil servant from Ramsgate in Kent. "He might be a very nice man; removing Saddam Hussein may have been a worthy ambition, but the point is that it was illegal." ...
Rajwa El-Giatha, born in Libya 20 years ago, was brought to England as a baby by her parents, opponents of the Gaddafi regime.
She said she was content to have found a home in Britain, and had no doubt Saddam was a very bad man indeed, but she thought the war against Iraq was proof that "America is trying to take over the world". There was widespread cynicism within the exiled Arab diaspora in London about British and American policy, though she conceded: 'Most of my Iraqi friends do actually support the war.'"

"An effigy of U.S. President George W. Bush..."
(Reuters/David Bebber, 2003/11/20)
"An effigy of U.S. President George W. Bush is pulled down in Trafalgar Square, London, as part of a large protest over his state visit November 20, 2003."

"'Bush, Blair, CIA..How many kids did you kill today?'" (David Carr, Samizdata.net, 2003/11/20)
An Illuminatus infiltrates the demonstration: "By the time they snaked their way onto Waterloo Bridge, they had almost become engulfed in silence. It was beginning to resemble a long forced march to a labour camp and the audible attempt at rousing another chant succumbed to the collective necrosis ("Bush...Blair...Lousy Hair"). I decided to take my leave at that point. Gone was all the snarling nihilism and revolutionary bravura I had witnessed back in February. All that remained now was a long trail of the incoherent, the incomprehensible, the dysfunctional and the faintly repulsive. This was not so much a demonstration as a wave of human spam."

"Bush Opponents Stage Protest in London" (Jane Wardell, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/11/20)
"At least 50,000 people set off on a march that took almost two hours to clear its starting point at the University of London. They passed parliament and the prime minister's residence on their way to Trafalgar Square where several thousand more protesters gathered ahead of the march.
The chief steward of the march, Chris Nineham, had predicted at least 100,000 people would join in, but as darkness fell, it appeared the numbers of protesters participating were far short of this prediction. ...
As marchers chanting "George Bush, terrorist" made their way through a business district, a few scuffled with three Bush supporters holding U.S. flags and a sign saying "support America." Police quickly intervened and bundled the trio into a nearby office building.
"I think it's a disgrace that these people are basically siding with Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida," said one of the three, Londoner Robert Temple. "Where were they when (former Romanian dictator Nicolae) Ceausescu came to town and why aren't they protesting against the people who blew up Turkey today?"
But some protesters said U.S.-British policy in Iraq was helping fuel terrorist attacks.
"It wouldn't have happened without Iraq. ... America is creating their own terrorists," said Ziggy Dlabal, a German sociologist who lives in London."

"Bush turns Europe's consensus on its head" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/20)
"George W Bush's Whitehall address yesterday represented the boldest challenge to the conventional wisdom of the British and European elites since Woodrow Wilson preached the rights of self-determination of smaller nations after the First World War.
A summary of that wisdom would go like this: (a) terrorism cannot be defeated in the long run, its perpetrators sooner or later have to be treated with, and their legitimate demands met in some form or other; (b) the Muslim world, and specifically the Arab portion of it, is culturally unsuited to freedom and democracy; (c) the Arab-Israeli dispute lies at the heart of the ills of the Middle East; (d) Israel is principally at fault in that conflict and must be pressured into making most concessions; (e) it is the EU that has played the lead role in bringing about the peace and prosperity of the Continent since 1945; (f) wrongdoers on the international scene should be treated with via multilateral forums such as the UN and associated bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency; (g) endless discussion in such bodies is therapeutic in and of itself, and is invariably preferable to the use of force." (See also: "Remarks by the President at Whitehall Palace" (The White House, 2003/11/19))

"Remarks by the President at Whitehall Palace" (The White House, 2003/11/19)
President George W. Bush's speech at London's Banqueting House:
"The peace and security of free nations now rests on three pillars: First, international organizations must be equal to the challenges facing our world, from lifting up failing states to opposing proliferation. ...
America and Great Britain have done, and will do, all in their power to prevent the United Nations from solemnly choosing its own irrelevance and inviting the fate of the League of Nations. It's not enough to meet the dangers of the world with resolutions; we must meet those dangers with resolve. ...
The second pillar of peace and security in our world is the willingness of free nations, when the last resort arrives, to restrain aggression and evil by force. There are principled objections to the use of force in every generation, and I credit the good motives behind these views.
Those in authority, however, are not judged only by good motivations. The people have given us the duty to defend them. And that duty sometimes requires the violent restraint of violent men. In some cases, the measured use of force is all that protects us from a chaotic world ruled by force. ...
The third pillar of security is our commitment to the global expansion of democracy, and the hope and progress it brings, as the alternative to instability and to hatred and terror. We cannot rely exclusively on military power to assure our long-term security. Lasting peace is gained as justice and democracy advance."

"Low turn-out for anti-Bush protests" (Ananova, 2003/11/19)
"Peace campaigners say they aren't disappointed at the low turn-out for George Bush protests across central London.
Around 200 protesters gathered at Jubilee Gardens on London's South Bank for a colourful parade.
But organisers from the Stop The War Coalition said they were not concerned with the relatively small number.
Aiden Hutton from Suffolk, who played the role of George Bush in the procession, said: 'There have been about 14,000 police, I think that's a wonderful turn-out.'" (See also: "Wednesday morning pics of Bush visit protests" (UK Indymedia, 2003/11/19), for pictures from this morning's protests.)

"An anti-Bush protester shouts..."
(AFP/Jim Watson, 2003/11/19)
"An anti-Bush protester shouts through a burnt American flag outside the Mall at Buckingham Palace in London."

"Why this protest is deeply shameful" (David Frum, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/19)
"The war on terror has glaringly exposed the moral contradictions of contemporary political radicalism: a politics that champions the rights of women and minorities, but only when those rights are threatened by white Europeans; a politics that celebrates creative non-violence at home but condones deadly extremism abroad; and, perhaps above all, a politics that traces its origins to the Enlightenment - and today raises its voice to protect militantly unenlightened terrorists from the justice dispensed by their victims. ...
I agree that context is everything, and the context of this week's events is that many thousands of British people intend to converge on central London to protest against the overthrow of one of the most cruel and murderous dictators of the 20th century - and to wave placards calling the American president who ordered the dictator's overthrow "the world's number one terrorist".
It's a deeply shameful context, and though I would not quite endorse the verdict of the taxi driver with the poppy stuck in his dashboard who dropped me off at the demos ("Not many of them traitors out tonight, I see"), he at least saw something that they, with all their apparently abundant education could not: that the two leaders they most scorn are the latest in the long line of Anglo-American statesmen whose willingness to use force to defeat evil secured them their right to make bloody fools of themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields and through the streets of London to Grosvenor Square."

"Bush in London" (David Warren, Ottawa Citizen/DavidWarrenOnline, 2003/11/19)
"What is interesting here, to those capable of taking a longer view, is the spectacle of history repeating itself — less in outward events, than in inward structure. As in the 1930s, leftists and pacifists on the streets of Europe directly advanced the triumphs of Nazism, so today the demonstrators work to advance the triumphs of Islamism. For they refuse to acknowledge the consequences of ignoring such an enemy. ...
In their own subjective world of illusions, the demonstrators demand not surrender, but an unobtainable "peace". However, in the objective world of cause and effect, they are the reliable allies of the people who flew airplanes into the World Trade Centre, who blow up Jews in synagogues and supermarkets, who tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves.
The connexion between present and past was well-made in an e-mail forwarded to me, from an American Jew, returning from holiday in Europe. He wrote that, "When my grandfather left Europe in 1937, the graffiti on the walls read, 'Jews go to Palestine'. Today the graffiti reads, 'Jews out of Palestine'. How soon Europe forgets." (Note: Thanks to Malcolm Smordin for the pointer.)

"Twaddle from the Axis of Neville" (Austin Bay, Strategy Page, 2003/11/19)
"Angry Euro-protestors attacking an American warmonger president?
Yawn. In the American idiom, "Been there, done that." Translation for Euro-sophisticates: "Passe, pal."
It's 2003, and the president is George W. Bush, but the teeth-gnashing rhetoric is right of out 1983 and the "Euro-missile protests" against Ronald Reagan.
This month is the 20th anniversary of the Great Euromissile Crisis. Oh, the accusations! Reagan was stupid. Reagan was dangerous, a warmonger seeking the nuclear destruction of the USSR. Reagan was — good heavens — a unilateralist. Today, the mayor of London calls Bush "the greatest threat to life on the planet."
Twaddle. The current crop of Axis of Neville (Chamberlain) leftish pundits and leaders are thus exposed, recycling 20-year-old insults. ...
The leftish teeth-gnashers will never get it. The figment utopias they tout can't be challenged by difficult facts. The green-cheese moons they detect orbit their own weightless imaginations, and the gravity of down-to-Earth decision, particularly when it comes to defending liberty, exerts little pull. Hence, the rhetorical hokum they spew that Bush is "more dangerous than bin Laden."
Ironically, the Euromissile Crisis proved to be the last big political battle of the Cold War. In 1989, the Berlin Wall cracked, and the communists' workers' paradise was exposed for the Red Fascist hell it always was."

"If it weren't for America, you wouldn't be free to protest" (Victor Davis Hanson, The Times/Benador Associates, 2003/11/18)
"Far more likely the shrillness of the London protest reflects the mood of the new Western citizen; the most affluent and privileged individual in the history of civilisation, who, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, can afford to find patriotism, civic militarism and the singularity of Western culture all so passé. In an era when the horrors of the Somme, the Great Depression, the Jewish Holocaust and even SS10 Soviet nukes are dim memories, we have riches and unrivalled freedom. So we demand perfection, expecting that we can stop racism, class oppression, sexism and environmental desecration as quickly and easily as we can find information on the internet or communicate across the globe.
In this unrealistic view of the perfectibility of human nature, far from being appreciative of our fragile peace, accomplishments and luck, well-off Westerners demand more. Furious over our perceived failures, we equate the pathologies of man exclusively with the sins of an all-powerful West, especially those of its most powerful nation as it is symbolised now by George Bush."

"The London Streets" (Amir Taheri, National Review, 2003/11/18)
"George W. Bush's visit to London this week will be historic for at least two reasons. He will be the first U.S. president to come to Britain on a state visit. He will also observe a bizarre political marriage: one between the remnants of the Marxist-Leninist Left and militant Islamists. Negotiated over the past two years, the "wedding," will be celebrated in a mass demonstration against Bush's visit.
The demonstration is organized by a shadowy group called "Stop the War Coalition," part of the Hate-America-International, which has orchestrated a number of street "events" in support of the Taliban and the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein since 2001. ...
The coalition has a steering committee of 33 members. Of these, 18 come from various hard left groups: Communists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and Castrists. Three others belong to the radical wing of the Labour party. There are also eight radical Islamists. The remaining four are leftist ecologists known as "Watermelons" (Green outside, red inside). ...
But the coalition's biggest success is the alliance that it has forged between the extreme Left and militant Islamist groups. This would have been unthinkable even a couple of years ago. The Left always regarded Islam as a "relic of feudalism" and an instrument of reactionary Arab regimes. For their part, the Islamists regarded leftists as atheist enemies who had to be put to the sword.
The first to advocate a leftist-Islamist alliance against Western democracies was Ayman Al Zawahiri al Qaeda's #2.
In a message to al Qaeda sympathizers in Britain in August 2002, he urged them to seek allies among 'any movement that opposes America, even atheists.'" (See also: Stop the War Coalition.)

"'I hate you'" (Harry Hatchet, Harry's Place, 2003/11/18)
"Another of those intensely depressing moments - The Guardian asks 60 people living in Britain to write their personal message to George Bush and, it has to be said, the best ones come from Michael Portillo and Charles Powell - two Tories. ... Depressing reading then but saddest of all is reading the words of 12-year-old Mickey, a little kid who has learnt to spout the SWP line:

Dear George,

I would just like to say how much I hate you. You have done nothing positive in your whole time as president. You are the reason for the poverty in the Middle East. You have no idea what you are doing. You're killing loads of people, and that is not excluding your own nation too. There are still lots of very poor people in America, and they are getting poorer.
You keep making excuses about Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, but all you were in Iraq for was the oil. Saddam had been there for 30 years, so why is it only now you decided to act? You keep talking about September 11 when all you do is bomb other countries and give Israel lots of money. It is a very bad idea that you have come over here.
I don't want to grow up in a country which is so influenced by you and your policies.

He's a 12-year-old lad.
So please don't tell me anymore about how the nihilists are just a tiny minority not worthy of attention. Please don't tell me that Harold Pinter, Tariq Ali and John Pilger are isolated individuals. They are poisoning young people and destroying what little moral credibility remained on the radical left.
I despise them and I despise that their pals in the media present them as the 'left' and leave the field free to the Tories.
But we can't leave the left to these people." (See also: "While we have your attention, Mr President..." (The Guardian, 2003/11/18), with messages from Harold Pinter ("I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments."), Frederick Forsyth ("You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable.") et al.)

"It's 'peace' psychosis in a nut's hell" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/18)
"If the anti-war cause is so just, it seems odd that it has to be so risibly "sexed up" by Medact and the rest, but the post-9/11 grand harmonic convergence of all the world's loser ideologies, from Islamic fundamentalism to French condescension, is untroubled by anything so humdrum as reality or logic. There's "no connection" between Saddam and al-Qa'eda, because radical Islamists would never make common cause with secular Ba'athists. Or so we're told by pro-gay, pro-feminist Eurolefties who thus make common cause with honour-killing, sodomite-beheading Islamists, apparently crediting Saddam with a greater degree of intellectual coherence than they credit themselves. ...
Too Christian, too Godless, too isolationist, too imperialist, too seductive, too cretinous, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your bugbear, you will find it therein - for the Continentals, excessive religiosity; for the Muslims, excessive decadence; for Harold Pinter, excessively bleeding rectums.
So be it. This is a psychosis so impervious to reason that on Thursday those in the most advanced stage will pour into the streets to re-enact the toppling of Saddam's statue with Bush on the podium. The 40 per cent of Britons who merely think the President "stupid" will cheer from their sofas."

"Livingstone says Bush is 'greatest threat to life on planet'" (Nigel Morris, Independent, 2003/11/18)
To call this hysterical is actually quite mild: "Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, launched a stinging attack on President George Bush last night, denouncing him as the "greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen".
His provocatively timed comments, on the eve of Mr Bush's arrival in London tonight, threaten to create severe embarrassment for the Prime Minister. ...
Mr Livingstone recalled a visit at Easter to California, where he was denounced for an attack he had made on what he called "the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years". He said: 'Some US journalist came up to me and said: 'How can you say this about President Bush?' Well, I think what I said then was quite mild. I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction.'"

"Protests begin but majority backs Bush visit as support for war surges" (Alan Travis and David Gow, The Guardian, 2003/11/18)
"A majority of Labour voters welcome President George Bush's state visit to Britain which starts today, according to November's Guardian/ICM opinion poll.
The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world". It explodes the conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will prove damaging to Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea that America is the "evil empire" in the world. ...
The ICM poll also uncovers a surge in pro-war sentiment in the past two months as suicide bombers have stepped up their attacks on western targets and troops in Iraq. Opposition to the war has slumped by 12 points since September to only 41% of all voters. At the same time those who believe the war was justified has jumped 9 points to 47% of voters."

"London Calling - Bush, Ambushed" (Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times/andrewsullivan.com, 2003/11/16)
Bush's state visit to Britain VI: "Afghanistan? We have just seen a new constitution unveiled which both embraces Islam and protects religious minorities and women. If it weren't for Bush, the Taliban would still be in power. Iraq? One of the worst tyrants in history has been toppled, 300,000 mass graves discovered, the marshlands of Southern Iraq are coming back to life, the Kurds and Shia can plan democratic futures, and Bush's policy is still declared a disaster because a few thousand remnants of the old regime, combined with other regional terrorists, are still fighting! The notion that this policy has already failed relies on so raising the bar of success that only a miracle would pass muster. Come back in five years - the only reasonable time period by which to judge Iraq's reconstruction - and we'll talk. Meanwhile, some $20 billion of aid money is coming from American pockets to rebuild a country devastated by totalitarianism. And the architect of this astonishing act of humanitarianism is compared to Hitler in the streets of London. It makes no sense. None. ...
If Bush is an incompetent, so was Truman. And so was Eisenhower. The difference, of course, is that the invasion and occupation of two vast countries thousands of miles away from the United States, and the beginnings of the reconstruction of a terrorized country of 23 million - all this has been accomplished with a speed and efficiency unheard of in human history. Every casualty is a tragedy. But in broad military terms, the Iraq war and occupation has resulted in around 300 combat deaths. That's mercifully, unprecedentedly low, however awful any single loss of life is. To call that military achievement and the painful path to progress in Iraq a disaster, a crisis or a quagmire simply stretches the English language into meaninglessness."

"Why I say welcome" (David Aaronovitch, The Observer, 2003/11/16)
Bush's state visit to Britain V: "The double standards here are obvious but worth a reminder. During the week anti-Bush protesters will, we're told, be splashing red paint to symbolise the spilled blood of the people of Iraq. No such red paint was splashed around London after Halabja, after the 1991 Shia and Kurdish uprisings or during the Iran-Iraq war, almost as if that were not real Iraqi blood. Blood, after all, is only blood if Americans spill it. ...
But our enemy is not America. It isn't America that gives the most effective support to Sharonic intransigence - it's Israeli insecurity that does that. It isn't America that sends ambulances to blow up aid workers or Istanbul synagogues. It is America, above all, that is bearing the cost of helping to create a new Iraq - a new Iraq which, despite the violence, is being born in towns such as Hilla and cities such as Basra. And yet some of our writers and protesters - betraying their own professed ideals - identify with bombers and not teachers, administrators and policemen who are building the country.
Where is the red paint to protest against the blasts at Najaf, of the UN in Baghdad, of the Red Cross, of the synagogues, of the Bali night-club, of the Arab-Jewish restaurant in Haifa? Where are the 'No Suicide Bombings' posters in the Muswell Hill windows? Or do you really believe we can save ourselves by constructing a huge wall around these islands, or around America, and painting it with smileys? That maybe then the ills of the world will leave us alone?"

"Bush's visit is Blair's declaration of independence" (Matthew d'Ancona, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/11/16)
Bush's state visit to Britain IV: "Even so, the level of antipathy to Mr Bush in this country, as in others, is quite extraordinary. Post-imperial British resentment of US power, the European superiority complex, and old-fashioned Left-wing anti-Americanism have fused in an ugly outburst of fury, directed at the war as an event and the President as a person. To listen to some Labour MPs, you would think that the devil incarnate was due to land on the tarmac on Tuesday night. For many of them - as for the marchers who, on Thursday, will exercise the freedom to protest so brutally denied to Iraqis until the fall of Saddam - anything that Mr Bush does or says is axiomatically wicked. ...
No: it is Mr Blair who is taking a political gamble. As controversial as the Iraq war was, as difficult as its aftermath has proved, I find it shaming that the visit of an American President should generate such ferocious loathing in this country. It is surely a cause for deep embarrassment that special measures are being taken to protect the head of state of our closest ally not only from foreign terrorists, but from Britons themselves: I do not remember any crowd control problems when President Putin, a former KGB chief and pitiless suppressor of dissent, made his state visit in June. The Prime Minister can be the woolliest, most risk-averse of politicians, and the most craven appeaser of focus groups. But on this matter - a visit which has become emblematic of all his troubles - he is standing his ground. As they say in Texas: plenty independent."

"All this just for a photograph with the Queen?" (Mark Steyn, The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/11/16)
Bush's state visit to Britain III: "As to the derangement of the crowd, they are impervious to reason. After two years of warnings from clapped-out Arabists that the incendiary "Arab street" was about to explode in anti-American rage across the Middle East, it remains as unrousable as ever. Instead, it is the explosive European street that remains implacably pro-Saddam, pro-Yasser, pro-jihad, pro-Taliban misogynist homophobes, pro-anyone as long as they are anti-American.
The demonstrations this coming week are best considered in the light of several smaller events: on Remembrance Day in Melbourne, "anti-war protesters" shrieked their way through the service; in Ottawa, "anti-war protesters" sprayed slogans on the National War Memorial a few hours before the start of the ceremony. Bush-hatred is just a form of cultural self-hatred."

"Pomp and protest" (Sandro Contenta, Toronto Star, 2003/11/16)
Bush's state visit to Britain II: "'He's the least welcomed guest these shores have seen since William the Conqueror,' says Scottish independent MP George Galloway, referring to the Norman warrior king who conquered England in 1066. ...
Galloway wants TV images of the protest to resonate in the U.S. media.
Americans have to realize, he says, that Bush's policies have managed to alienate even the people who are, historically, their strongest allies.
He hopes the images will encourage Americans to "rescue the world" and vote Bush out of office. And if they help the British people do the same with Blair, then all the better.
"We don't want the organ grinder, but we don't want his monkey, either," says Galloway, an organizer of the anti-war march that saw up to 2 million people on the streets of London just before Iraq was invaded.
In interviews with British journalists last week, Bush welcomed the protests.
"I am so pleased to be going to a country which says that people are allowed to express their mind," he said. 'That's fantastic. Freedom is a beautiful thing. And the fact that people are willing to come out and express themselves says I'm going to a great country.'"

"It was a good idea at the time" (Julian Coman et al., The Sunday Telegraph, 2003/11/16)
Bush's state visit to Britain I: "The White House is trying hard. But even the new "softer" Bush will have his work cut out to make a success of this week's formal state visit - the first to be made by a US President.
Overshadowed by the bloody aftermath to the Iraq war and the coalition's failure to find Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, the dream visit has turned into a transatlantic nightmare. A trip intended to celebrate the "special relationship" between Tony Blair and Mr Bush has become a frantic exercise in crisis management. ...
Outside, on the streets of the capital, there could be pandemonium. Streets are to be closed off as demonstrators are prevented from marching down Whitehall or gathering in Parliament Square.
In Trafalgar Square, an estimated 100,000 protesters will attempt to confront the so-called "toxic Texan" on Thursday, albeit at a distance. The Islamic Society of Britain has spent a week preparing papier-mache mock statues of the Queen's guest, ready to be toppled, designed to echo the fall of Saddam's statue in the spring."

"Britons Dubious About Bush Ahead of State Visit" (Paul Majendie, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2003/11/15)
"More than one in three Britons think George W. Bush is stupid and a majority branded the U.S. president a threat to world peace, opinion poll results published on Sunday showed. ...
Blair's ratings have plunged over the war in Iraq, which most Britons opposed. Bush fared no better in a poll conducted by the Britain's Sunday Times which cast a harsh spotlight on the special relationship between London and Washington.
Thirty-seven percent of those questioned thought Bush was "stupid," while a clear majority of 60 percent called him a threat to world peace."

"Bush's visit will be expensive, but America has paid many times over" (Tom Utley, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/11/15)
Utley on the first state visit to Britain by an American President:
"I mentioned the Roman Empire earlier, and I am reminded of the brilliant scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian, in which the leader of a Judaean terrorist organisation asks: "What did the Romans ever do for us?" The answer to that question went on for ages. (They gave us aqueducts, education, sanitation, decent roads, the rule of law.)
It occurs to me that the answer would be equally long if the question were now put: "What did the Americans do for us?" For a start, they twice saved us from German tyranny, entering conflicts that were not obviously their own; they rebuilt the economies of Europe and Japan; they gave democracy a chance all over the world; they gave us Hollywood and The Simpsons, the internet and the Boeing 747. Britain's greatest ever contribution to civilisation was the liberal democracy upon which America was founded, and for which its President is now the chief standard-bearer. How dare people quibble about the cost of his visit, when America has paid us a billion times more, in blood and dollars?" (See also: "Scene 9: The commandos" (mwscomp.com), for the script of the scene from "Monty Python's Life of Brian" which Utley refers to: "REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES: Brought peace.")

"U.S. Expats in UK Hit by Wave of 'Anti-Bushism'" (Paul Majendie, Reuters, 2003/11/13)
Ah, the "squandered goodwill" yet again. According to these London correspondents Bush has turned America into a "gun-toting, electric-chairing" ... "rogue state, a pariah nation":
"But now, after wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where British and Americans fought side by side, they face a wave not of anti-Americanism but anti-Bushism.
"It's tougher being an American in London than it used to be. Our President has made it so," said Newsweek Magazine's London correspondent Stryker McGuire.
"Even among friendly Britons, there's a growing skepticism about the gun-toting, electric-chairing land that has let Dubya be Dubya for nigh on three years now." ...
"Right now there is strong anti-Americanism and I compare it to the Vietnam War. Bush has been targeted as the villain in all of this. I think he is even more unpopular than Nixon was."
The New York Times ' London correspondent Warren Hoge told Reuters: "America is now something of a rogue state, a pariah nation."
'People repeatedly say it isn't Americans we don't like, it is just Bush. He pushes hot buttons. Bush has so much to do with this rather stupendous fall-off in American popularity. It is quite amazing to think where we were the day after September 11 and how much of that goodwill has been squandered.'"

"The Bush state visit" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2003/11/13)
Phillips thinks that "Bush's visit to Britain next week could turn into a major disaster": "The Americans have been going round in a kind of bubble. It's the same bubble, insulating them from the advice of candid friends which they simply override because to listen to it might admit to weakness, which has got them into such terrible trouble in Iraq. If they had bothered to look closely at what has been going on in Britain, they would have seen that the country has been engulfed by a rising hysteria about the US and Bush: an irrationality and complete breakdown in logic, common sense and moral reasoning from 9/11 onwards which has created the ugliest, most prejudiced and most dangerous national mood that I can ever remember. But the Americans, like the Israelis, have been so wrapped up in themselves that they have never opened their eyes to this. As a result, they have been almost entirely absent from the battle for hearts and minds, leaving a vacuum to be filled by the propaganda of noxious ideologues and their compliant fellow-travellers in the media.
The result is that if there are indeed massive, militant demonstrations against Bush next week — and they are being organised by the same people who brought us the anti-globalisation mayhem, but who this time will have the backing of a large swathe of ordinary Brits, too — this will not simply be a political disaster for Bush. It will be viewed as a major triumph by those waging war against the west, and will thus become a potent weapon to be used against us."

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"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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