Letters to Pres. Bush: UK Paper Prints Dozens of letters : Some show infantile hatred

The leftist British newspaper The Guardian has printed dozens of letters from famous and semi-famous people all over the UK. Some are good (like the one from novelist Fredeick Forsythe printed by the WSJ), others are predicatable anti-Bush and a lot are seething with the misplaced anger and hatred lambasted in two excellent articles yesterday by Andrew Sullivan and Mark Steyn.

Thank you for the leadership that you have given to the free world. Your father's decision not to topple Saddam in 1991 started a decade in which America looked weak, and unwilling to defend itself and its values. Escalating terrorism from al-Qaida went unpunished, encouraging further outrages. It was not American arrogance that led up to 9/11, but American feebleness. In parallel, Saddam came to represent the most successful defiance of the US and of the UN by a rogue state.

It is regrettable that Tony Blair misled you into thinking that he could deliver Mr Schröder, Mr Chirac and Mr Putin to vote for a UN resolution. The PM does, I am afraid, have delusions of grandeur. Unfortunately, the doomed strategy of making weapons of mass destruction the cause of war has discredited the war in the UK. You did better to say frankly that you wanted to remove the Saddam regime which so brutalised its people and destabilised the region.

Through you I would like to thank the American people for the sacrifice of lives that they have made, and for the billions of dollars of their money that has been voted to rebuild Iraq. We appreciated your words recognising the sacrifice made by British families.

Please do renew your efforts on the Middle East roadmap. The terrorists there can now be in no doubt that they will not win using violence. That is the necessary pre-condition for achieving peace, which with your commitment is within grasp.

Congratulations on organising your own security while in Britain. You may have noticed that our policemen could not protect the Royal family from a joker dressed as Osama bin Laden who walked into Windsor Castle. I don't think you could have relied on them to protect you against the real thing. Yours sincerely Michael Portillo

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.

Today you arrive in my country for the first state visit by an American president for many decades, and I bid you welcome.

You will find yourself assailed on every hand by some pretty pretentious characters collectively known as the British left. They traditionally believe they have a monopoly on morality and that your recent actions preclude you from the club. You opposed and destroyed the world's most blood-encrusted dictator. This is quite unforgivable.

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second.

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il... and hate a God-fearing Texan. So hallelujah and have a good time.

First, do no harm. Your state visit to the UK is risky, unpopular and awkward enough. Many Americans will be nervously peeking at the TV news from between our tightly crossed fingers and praying that you don't utterly disgrace us. Don't go all folksy and Texan, thanking Tony Blair for his friendship. He has enough to deal with already in the Labour party without receiving any more public kisses of political death from you. Don't interrupt when someone is asking you a question. Try not to puke on the Queen.

Second, despite all the security arrangements, physical barriers and traditions that make a state visit - as you have said yourself - like travelling in a bubble, you can make an effort to learn from this trip. You've said that you admire the longstanding British tradition of free speech. This week, free speech will be blasting in Trafalgar Square and in the streets. Pay attention. To British ears, your claim not to read polls sounds like stolid indifference to public opinion, not moral strength and political courage. Even if you are sheltered from the demonstrations, read the British newspapers - the whole raucous range of them. Watch television; listen to the radio. Competition as well as tradition makes the British media the feistiest in the world. If you argue your position from awareness of what they are saying, rather than ignorance, you may win some respect.

Ride in a London taxi. Why don't we have those superb vehicles here in Washington? Please get us some. And meditate upon the traits of intelligence, humour and dignity that will always make Britain great, whatever her status as a military power. Best wishes for a safe journey,

I would like to welcome you to our country. Both as a person and a president, you are a nice guy, and it is a good idea for both yourself and the people of England that you have taken the time to come over to visit our country. I am a self-employed person, and have been getting quite a lot of free advertising from your being in the public light for many years now. I would like to thank you for that. Only the other day I heard someone say on the radio: "George Bush, he's doing a guvvy [Newcastle slang, meaning a little job for oneself] job. I've just seen him parked outside the house!" I would have voted for you, George. I think your father was nice as well, when he was president about 10 years ago. Although my family and friends vary a little in their opinion, I think you are the right man for the job.

I don't know if you know Janet Street Porter, but she's one helluva sassy lady. Her motto? Tell it like it is. So let me tell you what it's like being me, right?

I've been away on sabbatical to research and write my new book, Wotchoo Lookin' At: The Authorised Biography of Sir Nicholas Serota (Faber, £35) and I arrive back in Blairland to find that for these past three years my son Marley has been lying on the green sofa in the basement in his Reeboks watching Eminem on MTV eating Big Macs, drinking Coke and surfing the internet for anything with Britney Spears on it.

What do all these have in common? Right first time, Georgie, baby. Country of origin: US of A.

What do you plan to do about it, then? Frankly, we in this country have been living under the American jackboot for far too long. As Harold Pinter so memorably put it in his recent poem:

There's a bomb/Up your arsehole/Chum/And if you want to shit it out/You can't/Chum/Because the president won't bloody let you/Chum.

The single human being I most admire in the world right now is Michael Moore. The guy's a genius. Talk about brave. If it wasn't for Moore, we'd never have discovered the link between Lee Harvey Oswald, the Osmonds, the tobacco multinationals, Pee-Wee Herman, Mark Chapman and Spiro Agnew. Nor would we now know that for four years in the 1980s Osama bin Laden was a fully paid-up member of the Disney Corporation, working first as a stoker on the Casey Jones Railroad Experience in Disneyland Florida, and finally as a key member of the Three Bears in the Goldilocks House in Disneyland Paris.

How to solve the whole Middle East thing? It would even be hard to solve just the Iraq problem in 200 words. But at least we can try. So first, George, let's for God's sake let bygones be bygones. I don't agree with your foreign policy, and - who knows? - maybe on reflection you don't agree with certain aspects of my forthcoming series of media studies seminars (Jade Goody and the Meaning of Big Brother) at the University of Oxbridge (formerly Thameside Polytechnic). But here's my advice - and it's advice I literally beg you, George, to take.

Take a few hours off. Light yourself a scented candle, dim the lights down low, and pick up Anita Roddick's wise and beautiful book, Lessons I've Learnt from the Peppermint Shower Gel Tribe of East Africa. Then read it, George - read it, and, believe me, you'll never want to go to war again.

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.

Please understand the complexity of the hostility that will be greeting you during your visit to Britain. Some of it springs from sincere opposition to the war in Iraq. Some of it is knee-jerk anti-Americanism from the left. Some is an often near-hysterical response to your pro-life words and deeds. Be assured that there are countless thousands of "ordinary" people in this country who, even if they disagree with you about the morality of the war and cannot understand how you reconcile it with your pro-life stance, are deeply grateful that you have committed yourself to upholding the right to life of every innocent human being from fertilisation to his or her natural end.

They thank you for the example you have set and wish that other leaders would follow it. They thank you for promoting pro-life legislation in the US - against partial-birth abortion and human cloning - and withholding federal funds from agencies which promote coercive abortion and sterilisation in China and Latin America. They thank you for constantly proclaiming that "all human life is sacred and deserves protection in all its stages".

Like you, they believe that destruction and trivialisation of preborn human life are incompatible with justice and democracy. Like you, they look to the day when our society comes to see that abortionism, human embryo abuse, and cloning - all forms of discrimination against human beings at their most vulnerable - are as unworthy of a civilised society as we already recognise slavery, anti-semitism and apartheid to be. Like you, they know that, one day, they will overcome, because justice and truth are on their side.

Our prime minister was never very bright, and it is well known that he forgot his roots and developed an identity crisis, but that is no reason for you to take advantage of him. Before Tony met you he used to stay at home. OK, he would cause trouble sometimes and he could be rude to his people, but he didn't have plans to conquer the world. No, Bushy, before he met you, all he wanted to do was conquer the Tory party (and the Labour party) and play his guitar.

Stay away from him, you are leading him astray, you are corrupting his simple mind. He is now allowing his Muslim citizens to be tortured, and now he thinks we all look like your old friend Mr Bin Laden - the Rastas, the Sikhs, the hippies, in fact anyone who has travelled east in the last 30 years is nervous.

The thing is, Bushy boy, we don't trust you. We've seen what happens when you fall out with your friends, and we don't want to be bombed when you come looking for our weapons of mass destruction - and we have lots of them.

Unlike Michael Moore, I do not hate you. I do not wish you or your family ill. It's just that I realised the other day that I have no idea exactly how old you are, what the name of your wife is, or the names of your kids or your dog. Who is in your cabinet? Who are your favourite movie stars? What do you like to eat? You are the first chief executive of the great land of my birth who has caused me to shut down, blank out who you are, what you are about and where you want to go.

That is because you are from my generation. I know you, W. I know where you have been. You are the rich kid who avoided the draft. My friends, too poor to earn a deferment, found themselves in the 13 months of hell that was Vietnam. Yeah, you did the drugs, the drink, turned, in your own words, your mother's hair grey - real ace baby-boomer stuff. I can still see guys like you cruising in your red Ford Mustangs while I was out marching or handing out leaflets, or struggling to pay my way through university while waiting tables into the early hours. But I don't begrudge you your money or your background. That's just the roll of the dice. It's cool. It's just that whenever I see your face, with its angry baby mouth and tiny blank eyes, I think of my betrayal of my own youth. I left our country to you, so that I could go off to "find myself", get two passports, hang loose. You, W, stayed, hung out with the right people, and one day found yourself the biggest dude on earth with the power to do what all of our generation felt was our God-given right to do: remake the world.

They say that we boomers have changed every generation we have gone through. We are changing middle-age, retirement, old age - maybe we'll even change death, man! And it could be one of us, in fact you, George W, who might just bring a halt to all the generations of this earth. Far out.

I address you, George, in your capacity as the world's leading terrorist fundamentalist. Secure in your multimillions of dollars and your helpfully reinforcing pieties, I doubt you will see any reason to be interested in what the rest of the world makes of you. Thankfully, an increasing number of Americans are beginning to see you through the eyes of the rest of the world, so your reign could be shortlived.

Truthfully, George, you are a disaster. You have managed, in a few short months and years, to identify the first part of the 21st century as the time when a voracious new American empire burst upon the world. In the world outside the US, nobody believes in your calls for democracy. You stole your own election. You try to strangle democracies, like Venezuela, which do not deliver pliant regimes. And everywhere the ordinary people of the earth, the overwhelming majority, will pay the price for your corrupt adventures.

Nearer your home, hundreds of men rot in Guantanamo Bay without access to justice. Thousands have "disappeared" on the US mainland. You preside over the worst witch hunt in public life since Senator McCarthy. Poverty, unemployment, racism are all on the rise. Like most "emperors", you poison your homeland while trying to devour the resources of the world.

We live in a world, George, where we have to live together, to find common solutions to the huge problems that afflict us. The horrific irony is that there are answers to poverty; to war, racism, disease and ignorance. You, in the name of your god and your country, are deliberately drowning out those answers in your patriotic and bellicose clamour, because as you know they imply a world without you or your kind.

It is a universal truth that those born with democratic spoons in their mouths will rail against the ruthless removal of a barbaric tyranny. Most of the people demonstrating against you will be the latte-rati - people whose experience of oppression is having to wait four hours for the cable guy to come round. I am the child of two refugees from totalitarian regimes; for this reason, you need not fear a comedy terrorist attack against your intervention in Iraq.

I don't care why you got rid of Saddam, and neither does any Iraqi I know. He's just thankful the Hussein dynasty is gone; a dynasty that, under Saddam's sons, would have carried on mass-murdering and asphyxiating natural freedoms for a few more decades. Although your country will requisition all the oil, the Iraqis are now able to protest.

George, as one interventionist clown to another, it's not your material, it's your delivery. Now, a word about royal protocol. Just because the royal family is reluctant to invite you doesn't mean you can't get next to them. I speak from experience. What to wear: well, a pink dress and a merkin does wonders for one's public image; trust me. How to behave: on meeting her, give the Queen a kiss and say, "You've been Barschaked!"

Finally, don't invite the press to opening night - they're out to get you. I've been there, too. Oh, and if you need someone to test out your security, call me.

The "Comedy Terrorist" who gatecrashed Prince William's birthday party at Windsor Castle

I wonder if Professor Jack Scarisbrick is J. J. Scarisbrick? If so, he's written some wonderful books on the late middle ages and early Renaissance in England, most notably "The English Reformation." I found his work very useful in my last book.

He would be likely to write such a sensible letter, I think.

I wonder, though, if this really is a good cross section.... Or if they intentionally included only letters from the IRRATIONAL left, and the THOUGHTFUL right?

To a letter, the critical letters are immature and petty, and the positive ones are thoughtful and logical.

Is it true that Leftists are from Mars, and Rightists are from Earth?

"I would have voted for you, George."

Oh yay, George Bush, Builder, too!

You know, the Guardian is AWFUL most of the time, but I have this iron-clad rule about judging a publication by the letters to the editor it prints. These are not all bad at all. The Bush the Builder letter is truly charming. I have to give the Guardian a "tip o' the hat" for these. I think they have probably chosen the best letters received for publication, and certainly printed several in strong disagreement to their own views.

Try finding that in the NY Times.

Imran Khan
Human rights lawyer

Where have you been? Time to stop admiring yourself in the mirror and get your butt over to Islam-o-land.

For about 1400 years, they haven't had a clue what "human rights" are...

or the idiot socialist:

I've been away on sabbatical to research and write my new book, Wotchoo Lookin' At: The Authorised Biography of Sir Nicholas Serota (Faber, £35)

(translation, while some hard working chump paid for my vacation to write a totally ridiculous book)

and I arrive back in Blairland to find that for these past three years my son Marley has been lying on the green sofa in the basement in his Reeboks watching Eminem on MTV eating Big Macs, drinking Coke and surfing the internet for anything with Britney Spears on it.

(Translation, since I have not done the responsible thing and raised my own child and obviously someone has been providing him with money I have a typical unsupervised kid)

What do all these have in common? Right first time, Georgie, baby. Country of origin: US of A.

(Translation, my country no longer originates things as we are all on sabbatical)

What do you plan to do about it, then?(Translation, I've ignored my accountability all this time I'm not about to start now)

Frankly, we in this country have been living under the American jackboot for far too long.(Translation, still ignoring individual accountability)

The weird thing is that almost all these Britons, even the ones on our side, seem to have so much sympathy for the Palestinians. Don't they understand that there is no hope for any Palestinian state as long as they allow themselves to be led by a corrupt, suicide bomb endorsing leader like Arafat?

Historically there never has been and never should be a "Palestinian State"

Read Joan Peter's "From Time Immamorial".

The Arabs got 97% of the land designated in the Balfour Mandate for a Jewish homeland and it was called TransJordan.

Then an Arab friend of Hitler was put in charge of Jewish immigration to the "homeland" during the time of the death camps.

Did you know that Jews have been buying land in the region since the 1800's?

Did you know that it is a death sentence in "Palestine" for an Arab to sell his land to a Jew?

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