God bless America

Sir: Stephen Robinson's unbalanced attack on President George Bush (Partial vision, selective morality', 5 October) almost recalled Christopher Hitchens' demented ravings against Ronald Reagan in The Spec- tator six years ago (20 July, 1985). Anyone accustomed to reading in the Daily Tele- graph, as I am for obvious reasons, Mr Robinson's adulatory greetings of each new cipher who puts up his hand for the Demo- cratic presidential ticket to the electoral slaughterhouse next year, will not be sur- prised at his hostility to the incumbent. He is entitled to his prejudices but his lack of rigour is disappointing.

In support of his view that 'American inaction and squandered opportunities are apparent in virtually every section of the State Department', he offers as evidence only churlish complaints at American inac- tion over Yugoslavia; at the President fol- lowing statutory requirements before ter- minating sanctions against South Africa; at his resistance to sanctions against China; at his conjectured readiness to have Castro's non-communist successor 'welcomed into the New World order with a straight face'; at his alleged preference for talking to John Major rather than Margaret Thatcher; at his allowing official American attitudes to Gorbachev to evolve; and at his perceived toleration of being mocked by Saddam Hussein.

Mr Robinson cannot seriously suggest an uninvited American military, or even diplo- matic, plunge into Yugoslavia. Putting European capabilities to a litmus test there is a perfectly sensible American policy. Mr Robinson has been around Washington long enough to know that there are certain hazards for a President in completely ignor- ing statutory Senate incursions into foreign policy, especially where, as in the South African sanctions question, his predeces- sor's veto was overridden. Mr Robinson, who is so justly critical of sanctions against South Africa, cannot seriously propose that the United States should now seek to impose sanctions on China, and his reflec- tions on Castro, Major and Gorbachev are even more completely spurious.

Mr Robinson gives President Bush grudging credit for his organisation of the diplomatic, political and military elements of victory in the Persian Gulf, and for not being drawn into an Allenby-like march on Baghdad. But he does not recognise that Saddam Hussein has no powers to resist Bush on matters of nuclear inspection or anything else.

Any attempt to do so will merely create another bloodless public relations victory for the American president. Saddam Hus- sein is, in many respects, the ideal Iraqi leader for American purposes; thoroughly discredited and emasculated, yet just strong enough to prevent the Iraqi Shi'ites from adhering to a greater Iran and Iraqi Kurds from destabilising eastern Turkey.

No credit is given to the American Presi- dent nor any mention made of his enlight- ened pursuit of inter-American free trade. The proposed common market with Mexico is an inspired concept, especially in contrast to the cavalier European treatment of Turkey's application for membership in the European Community.

Mr Bush gets no credit for his excellent response to the attempted coup in Moscow, nor for his being the first American presi- dent in 35 years successfully to face down the Israeli lobby in Washington and to emancipate American mid-Eastern policy from excessive Israeli influence. That he balanced this feat with an attack on the United Nations' equation of Zionism with racism goes unrecognised in Mr Robinson's dismissal of Mr Bush's address to the UN General Assembly two weeks ago.

This President's role in the removal of Noriega, Mengista and Dos Santos is at least as helpful as his predecessor's in the departure of Duvalier, Marcos and Ortega. Those who decried the American world policemen now lament American circum- spection. The Spectator, which through the unspeakable poseur, Hitchens, vilified Mr Reagan's ideological approach to world affairs, now laments Mr Bush's lack of ide- ology, and his 'courtesy'.

I caution you against reversion to the old Spectator practice of mere anti-American- ism, whether of the back-biting left, clutch- ing their Marx and Laski, or of the disgrun-

LETTERS

tied high Tory Imperialist right, wistfully fingering the later volumes of Arthur Bryant.

In recent weeks, as other correspondents have pointed out, The Spectator has pub- lished an error-riddled cover piece on the Reichmanns and Canary Wharf and a gra- tuitous sketch of Lord Carrington, who, amid a torrent of unrelievedly unflattering comments, was unfairly accused in his cur- rent endeavours in Yugoslavia, of pursuing `Titoism'.

Lord Carrington and Paul Reichmann would have the right to expect to be treated fairly by The Spectator even if they were not directors of the companies that ultimately owned it and friends of its proprietor.

It is not normally the duty of the propri- etor to distinguish between intelligent con- troversy and bile.

Conrad Black The Daily Telegraph,

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