The “Bush as Hitler” comparisions have jumped the shark. That analogy is sooo five minutes ago. What we need is a new monster that we can equate with the President. Someone hip, someone fresh, someone…British.

Fortunately for us, Arundhati Roy is on the job.

Roy is an Indian writer who I used to find charming and intelligent. In 1997 she won the Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things but has since focused (or shall we say squandered) her talent on political journalism.

In September 2001 Roy wrote an article for the London’s Guardian criticizing the war on the Taliban. Written just 18 days after the 9/11 attacks I thought her opinion was flawed, yet I excused it as a typical knee-jerk European reaction to American’s policy. Here we are, though, nearly three years later, and not only has she not modified her view but she’s slipped over the edge of moral relativism.

Speaking at the World Social Forum in Bombay she expressed her hope that President Bush would share the fate of Saddam Hussein:

"If Saddam Hussein deserves to be humiliated and have his fillings counted and his hair checked for lice on primetime TV, then so does George Bush.
… Saddam Hussein surely ought to be tried for crimes against humanity. But so should all his accomplices in the US and Europe. To applaud the US army's capture of Saddam Hussein and therefore justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq is like deifying Jack the Ripper for disembowelling the Boston Strangler."

Apparently, the God of Small Things is also the God of Small Minds.

(Hat tip: Uppity Negro)

Update: Leave it to fiction writers to think up every more creative "Bush = Evil man" comparisons. Scott Burgess from The Daily Ablution has a quote from Janette Turner Hospital in which she equates the President with a medieval Jew killer.