Infantile resentment

By the time this magazine hits the streets it will be jostling for space with about a million marchers. It is important to be fair to those who have turned out to parade their hatred of the American President. Some of them may be inspired by principled objections to, say, the treatment of prisoners in Camp Delta, or US steel tariffs. These are indeed powerful points to be made against Mr Bush’s government. What has brought so many folk on to the streets, however, is a much broader case: that the President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy, and who by his violent and ill-thought-out actions in Afghanistan and Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place.

In so far as this may be an accurate representation of the marchers’ beliefs, it deserves an answer. Let us dispense with the trivial abuse.