Oh, look - it's the "help twitchy white people feel safe" app. Illustrative that we're making this kind of thing, rather than anything that might actually help make neighborhoods safer.
Well, no. Bush had a glorious, golden opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to turn this huge wave of international goodwill into something that could have actually made the world a safer place.
Instead, he did precisely what the terrorists hoped he would do - Bush not only invaded Afghanistan, he lied the country into a breathtakingly stupid and pointless war with Iraq, single-handedly destabilizing the entire region and creating the ideal climate for terrorism to flourish.
The fact that Obama hasn't been able to put the toothpaste back in the tube doesn't mean that it's all his fault - it just means he was unable to clean up the global catastrophe that Bush created in eight years.
It looks like you're trying to make a "LALALA IT'S NOT RACISM UNLESS SOMEONE'S ACTUALLY WEARING A KLAN HOOD" argument. Do you want some help with that?
Of course America isn't the worst case - but the point is kind of at the heart of the matter, and minimizing the issue just because the issue is even worse elsewhere is nonsensical.
You're not kidding - calling le Carre a "pop novelist" to begin with, let alone lumping him in with a hack like Tom Clancy, is selling him desperately short.