The tale of how I became a Nazi and my Nazi harasser became a Jew is as intriguing as it is instructive. Last November I wrote a column about a racist email sent to me by an employee of an insurance company and my frustrations over the manner in which my grievance was handled. The man in question (a white, South African supporter of the British National party who complained of "undesirables flooding into Britain") was subsequently fired. His dismissal was not as a result of my column but because my original complaint had alerted the company to a previously unreported pattern of racist behaviour on his part. Of the numerous responses from the public I received, most were supportive but many were more abusive than the original message. One stood out. Incensed that something as "trivial" as racist abuse could lead to a man losing his job, one reader compared me to the person who betrayed Anne Frank. And so, through contorted metaphor and contemptuous logic, the harasser became the victim and the harassed was transformed into the perpetrator.

Victimhood is a powerful, yet contradictory, force. Powerful because, once claimed, it can provide the moral basis for redress, retaliation and even revenge in order to right any given wrong - real or imagined. The defence of everything from the death penalty to affirmative action, Serbian nationalism to equality legislation, are all underpinned, to some degree, by the notion of victimhood. Contradictory because, in order to harness that power, one must first admit weakness. Victims, by their very nature, have less power than their persecutors: victimhood is a passive state - the result of bad things happening to people who are unable to prevent it.

In the past, the right has exploited this tension to render victimhood a dirty word - a label synonymous with whingers, whiners, failures and fantasists. Revealing no empathy with the powerless nor any grasp of historical context, they wilfully ignore the potential for victimhood to morph into resistance, preferring instead to lampoon it as a loser's charter.

"The left had become little more than a meeting place for balkanised groups of discontents, all bent on extracting their quota of public shame and their slice of the entitlement pie," wrote columnist Norah Vincent three years ago. "All of them blaming their personal failures on their race, their sex, their sexual orientation, their disability, their socioeconomic status and a million other things."

Such arguments were always flawed. But increasingly they are beginning to look downright farcical. For if you are looking for someone making political hay out of victimhood nowadays, look no further than the right. The ones most ready, willing and able to turn the manipulation of pain into an art form have found their home among the world's most powerful.

Read the Daily Mail and you would believe that Britain is under threat from the most impoverished and vulnerable people in the land. Asylum seekers, immigrants, "welfare cheats" and single mothers are bringing the nation to its knees. While the country is going to the dogs, the Christians are, apparently, heading for the lions. "We, as a people, and the government, must make strenuous efforts to promote and defend our culture, and especially the place of Christianity in it and the rights to self-expression by Christians," wrote Simon Heffer earlier this year.

Across the Atlantic, the right's new role as victims is even more prevalent and pronounced. Straight relationships are threatened by the prospect of gay marriage, white workers are threatened by affirmative action, American workers are threatened by third world labourers, America is threatened by everybody.

At times, this means the powerful appropriating the icons, tropes and rhetoric of the powerless in their entirety, to hilarious - if disturbing - effect. Last year Roy Moore, the former Republican chief justice of Alabama, led a failed bid to keep a monument of the Ten Commandments in his courthouse. Standing before a group of supporters, some of whom were waving Confederate flags, emblem of the slave-holding South, he said: "If the 'rule of law' means to do everything a judge tells you to do, we would still have slavery in this country." Wearing T-shirts proclaiming "Islam is a lie, homosexuality is a sin, abortion is murder", they then sang We Shall Overcome.

In these cases, victimhood serves merely as a pretext for a backlash to reassert, extend or expand the dominance of the powerful. If these people are victims of anything, it is of the threat to their entitlement and privilege.

In others, however, genuine suffering acts as a precursor to genuine vindictiveness. The threat of suicide bombings in Israel serves as the rationale for building the wall to protect Israelis from terrorist attack. In the current intifada, the Israelis have lost more citizens than during the six-day war - no one should belittle their pain. Palestinians, on the other hand, have lost about three times as many people due to Israeli military aggression. Who, one wonders, needs protecting from whom - or is some people's pain more valuable than others'?

But nowhere is the abuse of victimhood more blatant than in the US presidential election, where September 11 remains the central plank of the Republicans' strategy for re-election. The fact that their campaign begins with the terror attacks is not only understandable but also, arguably, right - this is the most significant thing to happen in the US since Bush assumed office.

The trouble is that the campaign's message ends with that day also. September 11 has served not as a starting point from which to better understand the world but as an excuse not to understand it at all. It is a reference point that brooks no argument and needs no logic. No weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? "The next time, the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud?" No United Nations authority? "We will never again wait for permission to defend our country." No link between Saddam and al-Qaida? "They only have to be right once. We have to be right every time."

This is the real link between Iraq and 9/11 - the rhetorical dissembling that renders victimhood not a point from which they might identify with and connect to the rest of humanity but a means to turn their back on humanity. They portray America's pain as a result of 9/11 not only as unique in its expression but also superior in its intensity.

When 3,000 people died on September 11, Le Monde declared: "We are all Americans now." Around 12,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war, yet one waits in vain for anyone to declare that we have all become Iraqis, or Afghans, let alone Palestinians. This is not a competition. Sadly, there are enough victims to go around. Sadder still, if the US continues on its present path, there will be many more. Demanding a monopoly on the right to feel and to inflict pain simply inverts victimhood's regular contradiction - the Bush administration displays material strength and moral weakness.

Before September 30 Congress must consider its eighth extension to the 1996 welfare reform law, which was written to expire five years after its passage unless reauthorized. Once again, they are likely to defer the hard decisions. Yet, while there are differences between Congressional Democrats and Republicans about how to permanently extend the law (mostly around whether to toughen work requirements), they generally agree that reform has, by a large, been a success. But this bipartisan Washington consensus is wrong. Welfare reform has failed.

Yes, welfare rolls have been cut in half (although in many states they are on the rise again), but that is a very narrow measure of success, one which only suggests that reform, as intended, pushed women off the rolls and made it difficult for others to get on. It is not a measure of reduced need. Quite the contrary: according to the Department of Health and Human Services, by 2000 only half of those poor enough to be eligible for aid received it (about eighty percent did so in the 1980s and early 1990s).

Reform's proponents have also made much of the fact that poverty rates fell in the mid-1990s, but there is no evidence to suggest that welfare reform was the cause. Instead, it was more likely the result of modestly higher wages at the lower end of the labor market, thanks to the relatively low unemployment of the recent boom; families working more hours; and the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (which, while a genuine boon to the working poor, is also a government subsidy to employers who pay low wages). As data from the Economic Policy Institute show, had we not enacted welfare reform poverty would have probably declined further than it did. Welfare reform increased poverty. Regardless, overall poverty rates have been on the rise again, as new Census Bureau data have recently shown, as have child poverty rates, and more of those who are poor are very poor: according to the Children's Defense Fund, by 2001 more African American children were living in deep poverty than at any time since such data have been collected.

Meanwhile, in cities large and small homelessness has risen to historic levels, higher even than during the homelessness "crisis" of the 1980s. Throughout the nation soup kitchens and food pantries are stretched beyond capacity, struggling and failing to meet new need, much of it from working people whose wages simply haven't kept up. According to the Urban Institute, one-third to one-half of those who left welfare had difficulty providing food for their families. Half or more former recipients are poor (many are poorer than they were before), and some sixty percent of those who left the rolls in 2002 were unemployed.

This is success?

What's more, welfare reform has been expensive, despite claims in the Republican Contract with America that reform could save some $40 billion. According to the GAO, in 1997 alone states received $4.7 billion more than they would have without reform. While some of that new money has been used to fund child care and training programs, many states have used those funds for unrelated expenses. In 2003 and 2004, the Independent Budget Office reports, New York State used more than $1.3 billion in welfare funds to close budget gaps.

Nor have poor women been made less "dependent," another canard; they have instead been made more dependent upon men (as the PRWORA and its marriage incentives intended), or upon the already scarce resources of their friends and neighbors, the caprice of private charity providers, and the vagaries of the low-wage labor market. This too was intended. The US Chamber of Commerce and other business interests, quite active behind the scenes during reform debate, understood the potential rewards - an expanded pool of low-wage workers, and fat new contracts for service provision and administration.

For-profit and not-for-profit contractors have done quite well. In 2001, state and local governments spent more than $1.5 billion on contracts for basic TANF services and administration, nearly one-third of which were awarded to private companies; in every state but South Dakota some welfare services were privatized. Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting, of Enron infamy), Ross Perot's EDS, Citigroup, Lockheed Martin, and others have all gotten a piece of the lucrative new welfare pie. This is not reform, but redistribution, yet another instance of public monies lining private pockets.

This too was anticipated. "Compassionate conservatism" founder Marvin Olasky and other anti-welfare reformers insisted in the early 1990s that to redeem the "failed War on Poverty" we should emulate the "faith-based" charity system of the late nineteenth century. We did, by cutting cash relief, requiring work in exchange for aid, and privatizing service provision, just as almost all large American cities did in the Gilded Age.

But Olasky read that history rather selectively, for the nineteenth century reforms in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and elsewhere that he lauded ultimately failed - need among the poor exploded, unrest in the cities grew, and subsidies to private charities grew so large and corrupted that reformers recanted, fought anew to return relief to public control, and then helped expand it, laying the groundwork for the innovations of the Progressive Era and New Deal - the very programs our new breed of reformers seek to undo in a broad effort, it sometimes seems, to return us to the Gilded Age.

Welfare has now simply dropped off the political radar screen, alas; reauthorization ranked number twenty-two in Project Censored's 2004 list of least-reported stories. There is time to make up for that failure, but to do so we need the courage of our Gilded Age forebears. We must set aside the shallow conventional wisdom and take a clear-eyed look at what reform has done, and at who has really benefited.

This week a macabre milestone was passed in Iraq. More than 1,000 American soldiers have now been killed since the US-led invasion of the country began nearly 18 months ago. The overwhelming majority lost their lives after President George W. Bush declared major combat operations over in his now infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo-opportunity in May last year.

In that time, an unknown number of mostly civilian Iraqis, certainly not less than 10,000 and possibly three times that number, have perished, and hundreds more are dying each week. After an invasion and occupation that promised them freedom, Iraqis have seen their security evaporate, their state smashed and their country fragment into a lawless archipelago ruled by militias, bandits and kidnappers.

The transitional political process, designed to lead to constituent assembly and general elections next year, has been undermined because the nervous US-dominated occupation authority has insisted on hand-picking various permutations of interim Iraqi governors, mostly exiles or expatriates with no standing among their people. Whatever Iraqis thought about the Americans on their way in - and it was never what these emigré politicians told Washington they would be thinking - an overwhelming majority now views US forces as occupiers rather than liberators and wants them out.

The aftermath of a war won so quickly has been so utterly bungled, moreover, that the US is down to the last vestiges of its always exiguous allied support, at the time when Iraq needs every bit of help it can get. The occupation has lost control of big swathes of the country. Having decided that all those who lived and worked in Iraq under Saddam Hussein bore some degree of collective guilt, Washington's viceroys purged the country's armed forces, civil service and institutions to a degree that broke the back of the state, marginalised internal political forces, sidelined many with the skills to rebuild Iraq's services and utilities and, of course, fuelled an insurgency US forces have yet to identify accurately, let alone get to grips with.

There are signs that US officials are beginning to "get it" - in the phrase Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, patronisingly used this week to characterise Iraqis' grasp of the security situation. But if they are increasingly aware that what they have created in Iraq is a disaster, they seem at a loss to know what to do about it.

The core question to be addressed is this: is the continuing presence of US military forces in Iraq part of the solution or part of the problem?

As occupying power, the US bears responsibility for Iraq under international law, and is duty-bound to try to leave it in better shape than it found it. But there is no sign of that happening.

The time has therefore come to consider whether a structured withdrawal of US and remaining allied troops, in tandem with a workable handover of security to Iraqi forces and a legitimate and inclusive political process, can chart a path out of the current chaos.

Faced with a withdrawal timetable, Iraqis who currently feel helpless will know that the opportunity to craft a better future lies in their hands.

Take security. Iraqi forces are being rebuilt to take over front-line tasks. This is slow work, but that is not the real problem. It is that those forces already trained cannot stand alongside a US military that daily rains thousands of tonnes of projectiles and high explosives on their compatriots. Each time there is a siege of Fallujah or Najaf, with the US using firepower that kills civilians by the hundred, these Iraqi forces melt away. Until eventual withdrawal, there would have to be a policy of military restraint, imposed above all on those US commanders who have operated without reference to their own superiors, let alone the notionally sovereign Iraqi government.

Politically, if next year's elections are to have any chance of reflecting the will of the Iraqi people, the process must be opened up. Last month's national conference or proto-assembly was monopolised by expatriate politicians aligned with the interim government of Iyad Allawi. The only way national coalitions can be woven from Iraq's religious and ethnic patchwork is by including the opposition to the occupation. That means negotiating with the insurgents, probably through religious leaders of the stature of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. It also means an amnesty, which should help Iraqi authorities acquire the legitimacy to crush jihadist and other hold-outs.

Ideally, the US would accompany withdrawal by stating it has no intention of establishing bases in Iraq, and instead wishes to facilitate regional security agreements. That would be more stabilising than the current policy of bullying neighbours such as Iran and Syria, whose borders with Iraq the US in any case cannot control.

None of this will be less than messy. But whether Mr Bush or John Kerry wins the upcoming election, the US will eventually have to do something like this. Chaos is a great risk, and occupiers through the ages have pointed to that risk as their reason for staying put. But chaos is already here, and the power that is in large part responsible for it must start preparing now to step aside and let the Iraqis try to emerge from it.

Coming from where I am from, a "straight-talker" is someone who isn't necessarily articulate but one who is up-front and honest in speech and actions, even if what he is doing, or what he has done, offends the moral and aesthetic sensibilities of those who disagree.

So you can imagine my response to a president who before the Iraq invasion talked incessantly about WMDs, but who is now making his central theme: "We are staying on the offensive - striking terrorists abroad - so we do not have to face them at home." Why didn't you say that from Jump Street?

Coming from where I'm from, a person who isn't physically taking part in a fight but who tells his enemies to "bring it on" - knowing full well that those actual warriors doing his bidding are the only ones in harm's way - is called something that rhymes with plunk. Take the word plunk, remove the 'L' and you'll catch my drift.

Or to put it another way, I'm talking about someone who writes checks with his mouth that his behind can't cash. And that's why I think this "character" debate being played out on the presidential election campaign stage is ridiculous to the point of being absurd. I'm not the only one.

Of course, you expect that coming from an "anti-Christian, un-American, Marxist, Commie, left-wing, terrorist-sympathizer" like me, right?

But it goes deeper than that. Sure, you might expect Bush administration criticism from someone coming from where I'm from. But what you might not expect is a thorough critic, or better yet, a more thorough unveiling of the Bush administration from an avid fisherman and hunter who has been a NRA member for the past 30 years - someone like Mark Umile.

In case you haven't heard, allow me to introduce you to him. Umile is a 45-year-old registered Independent. "I'm part of what they call the hook and bullet crowd," he told me the other day.

"And I've always supported moderate Republicans like (former Pennsylvania governor) Dick Thornberg and even Tom Ridge," said the Philadelphia native, who is now a freelance writer and documentary filmmaker.

His most recent project was to author the book "Bush Unplugged: The True Patriot's Guide to George W. Bush," published by True Patriots' Press (www.bushunplugged.com).

Umile is also a longtime listener of the Rush Limbaugh radio talk show. So he decided to take Rush's advice to heart.

"When listening to Rush during the Clinton years, whether he was talking about Whitewater, Travelgate, Troopergate, this gate, that gate or even the Vince Foster suicide episode, Rush was always quick to tell his listeners, 'if you ever want to get to the bottom of any political intrigue, my friends, follow the money! Follow the money trail."

And so he did. "Bush Unplugged" is the result. It's a straight-talking exploration of the man "W" and the myth.

"While writing the book," he told me, "I would email chapters to conservative friends of mine and it freaked them out. What happens is when you learn the whole story and you're a conservative you get caught flat-footed. And then you're outraged that you've been duped and betrayed (by Bush).

"What we're dealing with here is an information gap," he said, adding that if conservatives took Rush's advice seriously and followed the money trail, they would realize they are the victims of the biggest neo-con in American political history.

He begins the book with a quote from an unknown patriot. "Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time, and your government when it deserves it." Then, in Chapter 1, he covers Bush's Vietnam years and follows the money trail through Texas oil dealings on down to the president's forays into Major League Baseball.

"Love him or hate him, the overwhelming majority of us have formed rigid opinions about Mr. Bush based solely on what we've learned about him from mainstream (media)...Beyond that the man's professional, political and personal history remains a complete mystery to the vast majority of our fellow citizens - and for good reason," he writes in the book's introduction.

The narrow-minded true believers probably won't bother to read Umile's book, but if you're looking for an honest, thoughtful and Republican-leaning assessment about President Bush, this book is for you.