Social life in London has become a dangerous business. You are at
an apparently relaxed dinner party, and someone suddenly launches
into an anti-American diatribe—as often as not, to general
applause. You are having a friendly conversation, when out of the
blue there is a crack about the utter impossibility of Dubya or
the evil ways of the Washington junta—and the assumption is
you’ll agree.
The occasion for these outbursts is usually, of course, Iraq. But
when the subject comes up it is striking how little time is spent
talking about Saddam Hussein and what should be done about him.
There is a ritual acknowledgment that he is not a nice man, and
then the real denunciations can begin. America is a rogue state;
don’t let them fool you, it’s all about oil (or alternatively all
about Dad); George W. Bush is a cowboy, a simpleton, a recovering
alcoholic, a madman, a usurper… . But readers of The New
Criterion hardly need to be taken through the whole litany.
According to Günter Grass, “the president of the United States
embodies the danger that faces us all.” Grass speaks, alas, for a
large slice of European opinion. And if you have read the recent
effusions of John Le Carré (“the United States of America has
gone mad”) or Harold Pinter, you will know that British
calumniators of
