Anatole Kaletsky: President the year's biggest loser
A YEAR can be a short time in politics. Surprisingly short, if you compare the stories dominating the media and party conversations in the past week with those of a year ago.
Then, as now, gallows humour about the frightening incompetence of the Bush administration, especially in Iraq, was fashionable. Then, as now, everybody in Britain was deriding Prime Minister Tony Blair's lame-duck status and wondering when Chancellor Gordon Brown would replace him and whether the Tories could possibly have a chance of winning an election this decade. Then, as now, Europe was perceived to be drifting into historical oblivion.
So has anything really changed in the past 12 months or could those of us in the news business have shut up shop and gone for a holiday without being missed? Despite Britain's general election and first jihadist attack, despite the spectacular defeat of the EU constitution, despite the continuing Iraqi bloodshed and the doubling of oil prices, historians are unlikely to remember 2005 as an interesting or pivotal year. Indeed, so far, the whole of this decade has been one of the least eventful on record.
This may sound perverse since conventional wisdom insists that life is moving faster than ever and that the world changed sensationally and irreversibly on September 11, 2001. But what has really happened since that awful day? Afghanistan and Iraq have been invaded and terrorists have claimed thousands of lives in Iraq, Indonesia, Palestine and other predominantly Islamic countries, but in the West there have only been two atrocities: in London and Madrid. Of course, even one atrocity is one too many, but remember that more than four years have elapsed since President George W. Bush declared his war on terror. And compare what has happened in the four years since 9/11 with the period that followed the US's previous declaration of war.
In the four years after 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, western Europe and Asia were liberated, Hitler died in his bunker, the two most brutally efficient armies the world had ever seen were utterly defeated and the atom bomb was invented from scratch and dropped on Japan.
In comparison with our parents' generation, we surely live in a remarkably stable and safe world, in which politics, society and even technology move at an almost glacial pace.
When viewed from this historical perspective, events such as the London bombings can be seen in proportion. But let me focus on what I think may be the one truly historic change that has occurred in 2005.
With poetic justice, the biggest loser of 2005 has turned out to be the previous year's most undeserving winner -- Mr Bush. Largely because of the sheer astonishing incompetence of the US occupation of Iraq, confirmed by the even greater incompetence displayed after Hurricane Katrina, Mr Bush's incomprehensible popularity and mysterious power over American voters have vanished in a puff of smoke, like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz....
Then, as now, gallows humour about the frightening incompetence of the Bush administration, especially in Iraq, was fashionable. Then, as now, everybody in Britain was deriding Prime Minister Tony Blair's lame-duck status and wondering when Chancellor Gordon Brown would replace him and whether the Tories could possibly have a chance of winning an election this decade. Then, as now, Europe was perceived to be drifting into historical oblivion.
So has anything really changed in the past 12 months or could those of us in the news business have shut up shop and gone for a holiday without being missed? Despite Britain's general election and first jihadist attack, despite the spectacular defeat of the EU constitution, despite the continuing Iraqi bloodshed and the doubling of oil prices, historians are unlikely to remember 2005 as an interesting or pivotal year. Indeed, so far, the whole of this decade has been one of the least eventful on record.
This may sound perverse since conventional wisdom insists that life is moving faster than ever and that the world changed sensationally and irreversibly on September 11, 2001. But what has really happened since that awful day? Afghanistan and Iraq have been invaded and terrorists have claimed thousands of lives in Iraq, Indonesia, Palestine and other predominantly Islamic countries, but in the West there have only been two atrocities: in London and Madrid. Of course, even one atrocity is one too many, but remember that more than four years have elapsed since President George W. Bush declared his war on terror. And compare what has happened in the four years since 9/11 with the period that followed the US's previous declaration of war.
In the four years after 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, western Europe and Asia were liberated, Hitler died in his bunker, the two most brutally efficient armies the world had ever seen were utterly defeated and the atom bomb was invented from scratch and dropped on Japan.
In comparison with our parents' generation, we surely live in a remarkably stable and safe world, in which politics, society and even technology move at an almost glacial pace.
When viewed from this historical perspective, events such as the London bombings can be seen in proportion. But let me focus on what I think may be the one truly historic change that has occurred in 2005.
With poetic justice, the biggest loser of 2005 has turned out to be the previous year's most undeserving winner -- Mr Bush. Largely because of the sheer astonishing incompetence of the US occupation of Iraq, confirmed by the even greater incompetence displayed after Hurricane Katrina, Mr Bush's incomprehensible popularity and mysterious power over American voters have vanished in a puff of smoke, like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz....