When President Bush visited England in a pre-election jaunt last year and stayed in an apartment at the rear of Buckingham Palace, he was driven to the front of the Palace to talk with the Queen in an armoured car with a bevy of security men around him.
Two days ago, only four days after the horrific terrorist attack on the London Underground, the Queen celebrated the 60th anniversary of the ending of WWII by leading a parade of war veterans in an open car down the London Mall in full view of half a million people.
It might be said that it was not President Bush who was a coward but his security advisors. But did he not have the courage that, as the Queen's house-guest, he could over-rule his security men just for once and trust the Queen to look after him safely?
It might be said that it was not the Queen who decided that she should proceed in an open car so that she could have been attacked by a sniper or a suicide bomber. But the fact was that the Queen had the courage to comport herself with dignity and calmness during this highly vulnerable occasion with veterans of her age or a little older who had already shown their courage in warfare.
It would be easy to characterise America as a country with an immature and hysteria-prone culture. But that would be unfair. Americans are innately no different from anybody else and America also has a great number of virtues -- not least its Constitution which this country has never got round to writing. Nevertheless, at the present time, America is not only the most powerful nation on earth but also the most irresponsible -- with the exception perhaps of the Royal Sheikhs of Saudi Arabia. And, gradually, America is coming unstuck with an administration (at least, during Bush's first term) of the intelligence rating of all the previous failed enterprises that Bush was involved with. As a personality, Bush was originally a presidential candidate who was an advertising man's dream. As a President, he allowed himself to be led by the nose by secretive people like Vice-president Cheney with simplistic ideas about economics and international diplomacy.
So there we are. Thank goodness, the American press are now finding the courage they displayed during the Watergate affair and the threatened impeachment of President Nixon. The net is now closing round Bush. I think I wrote about 18 months ago on this list (but certainly elsewhere on the internet) that Bush ought to be impeached (and rashly forecast that he soon would be!). But the signs are from America that impeachment is now being seriously thought about.
"The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding small."
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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