For The Byron Echo, December, 2005

Some people from a particular town tried to kill Saddam Hussein. This made him angry and he sent in some troops to kill, at random, a couple of hundred people from the town. And this is why he is on trial now, and may hang for it. And why shouldn't he hang for it? Assassination is wrong, and those who tried to kill him wrong to attempt it, but reprisal massacre is even more wrong. So hanging him is okay. Or it seems okay until you look at a parallel case in law.

Some people tried to kill George Bush. They did it on September 11, 2001. They aimed a plane full of petrol at the White House, and other planes full of petrol at the Capitol, and at the World Trade Centre. This made him angry, and he sent in an air force, an army and a navy to shell and bomb to smithereens a whole country in reprisal. He did it because the man who planned the attack was living in that country. The shelling and bombing killed not hundreds but tens of thousands of people. It didn't kill the man responsible, but it killed a lot of children. Should George Bush hang for this? Assassination is wrong, and terrorist bombing is wrong, but the massacre of tens of thousands of innocent people is even more wrong.

To think like this is to think as the Arab world, and the Muslim world, thinks all the time. And this way of thinking is why Hamas, a vengeful warrior group, democratically won the government of Palestine. Hamas may be murderous, but they are not hypocritical. They do not pretend that killing innocent people is an unintended, sad misfortune they always regret, alas, the next morning. Killing innocent people is what they do gladly. Killing innocent people is a tactic they embrace.

How long will it be, oh Lord, before American hypocrisy is seen in the West as it is in the Arab and Muslim world, as a contemptible evil deserving of heaven's punishment plus a justified reprisal or two? How long will it be till American firepower is seen in the West as a waste of money, which makes five further foes with every foe it kills? How long before we realise the new, Jew-baiting rulers of Iran, and the new feared militant suicide-bombing rulers of Palestine are the Frankenstein creatures made in Bush's wacko laboratory of smart bombs, unmanned rockets, levelled cities, cluster bombs, polluted water, torrid heat, intermittent electricity, trigger-happy troops that don't speak the language and regrettable civilian casualties? A while, I think. And in the meantime we, the West, have lost the century, and undeserving fanatics have won it. Discuss.

Bush and Hamas

George Bush in his big speech this week said that though Hamas won power in a fair election they should now disarm, 'renounce violence' and recognise Israel -- abandon, in short, all the policies that won the election for them, behave, in short, as if they had lost the election; much as he might now seek peace with Osama bin Laden having sworn he wanted to kill him. He didn't also say 'beat your swords into ploughshares' and bid the lion lay down with the lamb but he might as well have. What he says these days is not even spin any more, it's denial. He's lost his big war, lost it hands down, and he still believes, and truly believes, he's winning it.

The families of 2250 dead Americans and 100 dead British and 120,000 -- or is it only 30,000? -- dead Iraqis don't think he is. Nor does the Arab world, so pleased to hear Osama's voice again, to see Saddam storming out of his trial, to applaud Ahmadinejad's determination to go nuclear despite Condoleezza's hollow hints of a further war that her husb--, sorry, her President, can't any longer afford to wage. Nor do the two hundred million Americans who no longer trust him, nor the five hundred million Europeans who wish he'd go away.

Hamas's victory is the monster he alone created. Had he dealt with Yasser Arafat, duly elected, and respected, Arab leader with a Nobel Peace Prize, and not agreed by nod and wink to his poisoning, he'd have had his roadmap compromise by now, and a semblance at least of a truce. What he's got instead is Islamist fanatics running Iran, Iraq and Palestine, all hopping mad at him and keen to kill Americans wherever they can find them and curse, bomb and buffet every surviving Zionist Israeli into the sea.

And George can't see, or he won't admit, that this is what he's done. As a boy when he was aced at tennis he'd say, 'Let's play that serve again, I wasn't ready.' And he still reacts that way, and like a true God-bothering drunk with a hooch-addled brain he believes, he truly believes, that history can be reversed if you only wish for it hard enough. Because God will hear your cries, he really will.

The Democrats will win now and impeach him, and he'll be thought, and thought rightly, the worst and kookiest US President in history. Even so go most world leaders who believe a deity speaks through them, and guides their humble steps to foredestined victory. They are simply, visibly, blitheringly insane, and eventually somebody notices. Discuss.