THE VOICE OF THE MIRROR (Column)

BUSH'S WIN PUTS US ALL IN DANGER
November 5, 2004

AMERICA'S greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, once advised: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

Those who voted George Bush in for four more years removed all doubt that the majority of Americans have learned little since September 11, 2001.

In the months that followed the destruction of New York's Twin Towers, the people of the United States had the sympathy of the world.

President Bush lost it for them. He took his country into a war which has cost 1,100 American lives and tens of billions of dollars.

He has alienated virtually every other country. If people of other nations had a vote, he would have lost by a landslide.

He has been hopeless at running the US economy, turning a record budget surplus into a record deficit. He has lost millions of jobs. He cut a million people out of health care.

His much-trumpeted tax cuts put a fortune in the pockets of the super-rich while doing next to nothing for ordinary Americans. Yet they voted him back.

With another four Bush years ahead, the future looks desperate. For us in Britain it could be particularly bad.

If Tony Blair continues his sycophantic following of the President we will become still more isolated.

The situation in Iraq is bad enough. But Mr Bush wants to go after Iran next.

The world was a dangerous enough place after 9/11. President Bush's military bravado has made it worse. In the next four years it is likely to become more terrifying still. Making it more, not less likely that we are at risk of a terrorist attack.

That is what the majority of the American people have done by re-electing an ignorant, arrogant, swaggering administration.

Abraham Lincoln must be turning in his grave.