John Roughan: Like all bullies, Bush picks only on the pushovers

Little bullies are the worst. Big brutes know instinctively that if they throw their weight around too much, if they stomp on somebody's head when he's down, for example, or invade Kuwait, they will be quickly dealt with.

But little guys get away with more. They can pick a fight with some big, nasty wretch who was long ago beaten to the ground and has had the world's boots on his chest ever since, and we spend a year seriously debating whether to kick his head off.

Not all runts are like this. Don't accuse me of shortism. Little John Howard next door, who will arrive to demonstrations here today, is not a bully. Not really. He is inclined to swagger about Southeast Asia a bit, but his actions are sound. The protesters could applaud him for East Timor.

He just isn't big enough to stand up against a manipulative little bully who rewards his allies with trade opportunities, sacrifices Iraqi Kurds for the sake of Turkey's support and tells the United Nations it will be "irrelevant" if its Security Council does not bless the unprovoked thuggery he plans to execute anyway.

We could see next week how relevant the UN really is.

Polls almost everywhere find the vast majority of people unconvinced of the need for another war on Iraq. Most people, casting about for a logical explanation, settle on oil. Oil supposedly explains everything in the Middle East.

But if that were so, the West would have reached for its guns when oil prices were rigged sky-high in the 1970s. In truth, there is plenty of oil in the world. This is not about oil.

It's about the character of those now in command of armed forces more powerful almost than all the other forces in the world combined. That's all.

Little bullies are particularly dangerous because they have had to make themselves popular. They could never talk tough unless they had made sure they had far more supporters than the bigger guy.

Take George. He has always been popular. Partly it was because his father was a respectable big wheel and George had the same name. So when George kidded around, drank too much, raised hell, it was kinda cute.

But there was more to him. He was intensely committed to principles and people he believed in. Still is. George is genuine. And the thing that strikes people most, even now, is that he is personally humble.

That is the reason, I think, people like him so much. Even our Helen, who is not at all attracted to macho behaviour, really seemed to like him when they met.

The problem is that he is not subtle, reflective or far-sighted. He believes in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. And he has this Churchillian delusion about his role.

It was mightily reinforced by an outrageous assault on the United States soon after he was elected. Everybody was behind him when he retaliated for that. But when the principal suspect eluded him, he looked for an easier target. Stupidly, he picked three at once.

"You, you and you," he said to Iraq, Iran and North Korea. "You are evil. An axis of evil." (He has this weakness for bad lines.)

Iraq and Iran looked at each other: one Sunni, the other Shia; one a secular state, the other a Shi'ite theocracy. They had fought for eight years and were still mortal enemies.

Across the playground crazy, self-impoverished, unpredictable North Korea had been grudgingly acknowledging, at China's insistence, friendly gestures from its wealthy southern sibling. As soon as George called out, the north withdrew its hand and watched him.

When it saw that he would first go for Iraq it knew that, like all bullies, this one was a coward.

Iraq had been frightening once but it wasn't any more. Its despot had been firmly put in his place, by George's father as it happened. Those "crack" Republican Guards proved to be no problem.

George knows Iraq will be a pushover. He thinks his father should have gone all the way when he had the chance.

His father, incidentally, never had complete confidence in George. He always thought young Jeb had better political instincts. But George is President and playing with fire. The old man's former national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, has warned him so.

As George saw it, he would bring instant democracy to Iraq. Now that his advisers have talked to Shi'ites, Kurd factions and various exiles, it's a little more complicated than they thought. They may have to occupy Baghdad for a while, or let the UN do the job if the Security Council backs up an attack.

Undeterred, the President now claims he will bring democracy not just to Iraq but to the entire Middle East and thus solve the Palestine problem in the process.

In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute on February 26, he invoked an Israeli fantasy that the overthrow of one dictator will cause a chain reaction in the Arab world.

Every Arab I have met leaves me in no doubt of the prevailing popular will. A US occupation of Baghdad seems more likely to spark nationalist uprisings and terrorism with a vengeance.

George's statecraft has already caused North Korea to turn back to "weapons of mass destruction". And they are not talking about vials of anthrax and old stocks of nerve gas. They're talking nuclear.

Then last week the International Atomic Energy Agency drew attention to a disturbing programme of uranium enrichment in Iran. What else can you do when you are on the evil hit-list?

If the Security Council refuses to go along with any more of this madness it will not be "irrelevant". It will be better placed to repair the damage.