The surest sign of moral hypocrisy is to do one thing for your friends and then quite the opposite for others, claiming all along that you are a principled human being. Principle and justice are blind.

That is why the lady holding the scales on the roof of every courthouse in the West is blindfolded.

President Bush, whose strongest appeal is his firm beliefs and his unwillingness to waver from such beliefs, has just shown the world that he is like any other politician on this planet. Even his staunchest supporters will concede that Mr. Bush is one-dimensional. Now we know that he is one-dimensional with a corrupt twist.

As a reward to Blair, Bush has agreed to reconsider the status of the British prisoners at Guantanamo. As an afterthought, he remembered the other ally, Mr. Howard of Australia, and extended the benefits further south, even though Howard has been complacent and rather mute on anything that might anger his formidable ally.

I was not a fly on the wall when Blair pleaded with Bush, but can anyone tell me that Bush did not simply smile (artificially, as is his wont) and say: “I will flout every known law to man, but for you my dear, nothing is too precious”? And off we go on the merry-go-round of selective principles and selective applications.

According to the US, all the men held in Cuba are of the same ilk, the same religion, the same ideological tint, and are all “bad men,” in the words of the president. The world agrees that they will not have a fair trial and are being held in clear violation of all international agreements. If they are guilty, let them be charged and tried. If they are not, let them out.

This is what the world has been saying. The Brits have every right to demand their citizens back. The UK has one of the most draconian laws governing terror and terrorism in general. If the accused are guilty, they will receive their punishment, if not, they will be freed. This is what will happen, and anyone with any sort of knowledge about the British justice system will feel relieved on points of principle.

But wait a minute. Bush has not yet conceded anything beyond a willingness to review the status of these people. Knowing his style, the “review” will go on forever. Yet again, Blair has been hoodwinked by an inferior intelligence with a mightier army.

It would have been better for the president to either hand them over to Britain or simply refuse to make exceptions. He would have had the grudging respect of Blair and the respect of all other people on earth. We would have seen a genuine piece of principled stubbornness. As it is, the Brits get nothing and the world is smirking in I-told-you-so mode.

Justice partitioned according to citizenship is not justice at all. Justice dispensed with a view to a good word put in on behalf of the defendant by someone who has the ear of the powerful smacks of Third World corruption. There are 680 detainees on Cuban shores.

They hail from 40 countries. There are quite a few of them from Kuwait, the staunchest, most reliable, visible, and willing ally of the United States. Kuwait is not happy about this latest development, and the lawyer defending their detainees has slammed the Bush Administration. After all, without Kuwaiti support neither Blair nor Bush could have put a single soldier on the borders of Iraq. Don’t they deserve a better or a similar deal? This begs the question: What is the criterion for being considered an ally and not a subservient pawn used and then discarded? I might as well venture an answer here that has to do with blue/green/gray eyes and praying over the phone to the same God. Apart from this glaring racism (based on who intervened rather than who is to be tried), this decision has the hallmarks of a catastrophe in the making. As the Americans sink deeper into the quagmire of Iraq, the message this decision sends to the population over there is a sinister one. People will note how, as a race, they are viewed and how they will be treated if need be. This would be enough to swell the ranks of the resistance movement with fresh recruits just as the US is looking for UN and other help to stop this downslide.

The Internet, which is just about the only place Arabs are expressing themselves freely these days, will swell with propaganda using this issue to drive home a point already obvious to the majority. Is this what the United States wants? The euphoric triumphalism of a war against an impotent enemy is over. Now the hard part begins — or rather has begun already. The uproar against the evidence for weapons of mass destruction is reaching a crescendo. No one will be spared. Bush and Blair are in trouble and there is no denying it. The best that Bush could have done to support his friend and help himself is to stick to his “principle” no matter how misguided it is. But life in politics has a strange twist and it is inevitable that it will provide the opportunity for those in power to show their real colors. And this situation is no different.