Good luck to them
Some of my best friends are Americans. My father spent five happy years in the States during the 1930s and I was brought up to be pro-American … I came to realise that much of what was best in American values stemmed from the good work of those East Coast “liberals” who became such a favourite target for the Reagan Revivalists of the 1980s.
When George Bush came to town to reclaim the Republican crown that his father had lost to Bill Clinton, we wishy-washy liberals feared the worst … Then came September 11 2001 … In their innocence the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and far too many other naive observers, thought that, after the tragedy, they might see something of a, to coin a phrase, “kinder, gentler America”.
Well, there have been a number of episodes recently (that don’t need spelling out) to disabuse people of this illusion. And the latest is undoubtedly the $2.13 trillion (�1.5 trillion) budget the president sent to Congress yesterday … The largest and most significant element in this is the $1.7 trillion tax cut which is predominantly directed at the rich - in the immortal words of a past World Bank official - “at the sort of people who are wondering whether to install a fifth bathroom in their fourth home”.
What about the third world whose poverty is linked by most observers to the kind of situation that breeds the terrorism Washington wishes to fight? Forget it. …
There is something wonderfully predictable about the awfulness of the Bush Republicans. Oh, and by the way, the increase in the defence programme at $48bn will be roughly equivalent to the entire industrial country aid programme to the third world … A new generation of American liberals has new struggle on its hands. Good luck to them.
- William Keegan, The predictable awfulness of the Bush Republicans, Guardian Unlimited, 5 February 2001
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