Dear John Lecarre'

[...]Probably no American president in all history has been so universally hated abroad as George W Bush:

And?

for his bullying unilateralism,

30+ country coalition.

his dismissal of international treaties,

Just the ones trying to wreck the US economic engine or subject US citizens to the whims of a faceless world bureaucracy.

his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures,

As one of the youngest countries in the world (albeit the oldest democracy), it would be unseemly for the US to take the world to raise. Let them see to their own aspirations.

his contempt for institutions of world government,

Oil for food. Srebrenica. Darfur. Yeah, I can see how you'd have a whole lot of anything other than contempt for "institutions of world government".

and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war

Check with your lawyer. S. Hussein was in violation of the cease-fire terms from the first Gulf War for twelve years, and in violation of numerous resolutions from your precious world body, the UN. I'm pretty sure that makes it legal.

- and now anarchy -

War is hell. The aftermath is messy. I hope you don't call yourself a realist.

upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship, but had no hand in 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction,

They should have mentioned that. Might have bought them some time.

and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the US in a dirty war against Iran.

Aside from the established record of aiding terrorists, which Bush specifically said was an outrage up with which we would no longer put. Abu Nidal ring any bells?

Is your president a great war leader because he allowed himself to be manipulated by a handful of deluded ideologues?

No, he's a great war leader because he didn't allow himself to be misdirected by a handful of deluded transnational utopian statist ideologues.

Is Tony Blair a great war leader because he committed Britain's troops, foreign policy and domestic security to the same hare-brained adventure?

No, he's a great war leader because he stood on principle even though it nearly cost him his base. As much as I despise his domestic policies, the man has grit.

You are voting in November. We will vote next year.

Yes, we're both democracies. How nice for us. And now Afghanistand is too! And soon Iraq. Isn't that nice?

Yet the outcome in both countries will in large part depend on the same question: how long can the lies last now that the truth has finally been told?

Ask John Kerry. His campaign seems to be unravelling like the sleeve of a cheap suit.

The Iraq war was planned long before 9/11. Osama provided the excuse.

Uh huh. And Debbie Gibson is pregnant with your two-headed love child.

Iraq paid the price. American kids paid the price. British kids paid the price. Our politicians lied to us.

There's the difference between us: I don't think of the military as a group of big-eyed children in need of milk and cookies.

While Bush was waging his father's war at your expense, he was also ruining your country. He made your rich richer and your poor and unemployed more numerous.

Wrong on both counts, actually.

He robbed your war veterans of their due and reduced your children's access to education. And he deprived more Americans than ever before of healthcare.

Meh. Vague and alarmist. To what, specifically, can you possibly be referring?

Now he's busy cooking the books, burying deficits and calling in contingency funds to fight a war that his advisers promised him he could light and put out like a candle.

I'm sorry, that's a ridiculous characterization, not only of the war and the leadup to war, but of the way the American government functions. No wonder your novels are impenetrable to me.

Meanwhile, your Patriot Act has swept aside constitutional and civil liberties which took brave Americans 200 years to secure, and were once the envy of a world that now looks on in horror, not just at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but at what you are doing to yourselves.

Look, idiot, I live here. Allow me to assure you McCain-Feingold and the Hatch act have done a fuck of a lot more to restrict my constitutional liberties than the PATRIOT act ever will. This kneejerk reaction to the word "patriot" has got to stop if you expect anyone over here who doesn't live in Berkeley to take your concerns seriously.

But please don't feel isolated from the Europe you twice saved.

Bit late to kiss up now.

Give us back the America we loved, and your friends will be waiting for you.

Ah, if only you loved us when we weren't on our knees.

And here in Britain, for as long as we have Tony Blair singing the same lies as George Bush, your nightmares will be ours.

"The British they cried and cursed Yorktown,
While the band played "The World's Turned Upside Down". -Jimmy Driftwood, "Soldier's Joy"