simply an honest but simple man in the White house at the wrong time. I'd rather he was shown the misery he caused and force him to meet the families he decimated He has met enough of those who have suffered as a direct result of his wars, nevertheless I think Bush was right in Afghanistan and although I am honestly unsure either way about Iraq, I think he was both brave and correct to support the surge that has given the country a realistic shot at developing into a normal state again over time. Well, sadly Barber is not alone - many Western intellectuals appear to be peculiarly prone to embracing some SOB or other, whether of the left-wing or right-wing variety. Think of Ezra Pound's advocacy of Mussolini, or Heidegger's cosiness with the Nazis. Think of the pilgrimage of writers, artists and academics who flocked to praise Stalin - from Sartre to the Webbs, Paul Robeson to Harold Laski. Think of how soon someone like Cherie Blair, who entered power with a reputation founded on human rights' advocacy, accustomed herself to cosying up with war-criminals. At the end of the day,Orwell was probably right - it is just power-worship dressed up as either a quasi-Hegelian justification of "the march of history", or possibly in some cases an echo of Carlyle's "Great Man" theory. NunOfTheAbove 15 December 2011 7:47PM Response to poppy23, 15 December 2011 7:20PM I only have to be a human being to know that what happened