Verdict on Bush

Editorial:

7 November 2006

Is there any reason for excitement in the Middle East at the outcome of the US midterm election? The answer, unfortunately, is probably not.

The electorate will very probably want to punish the Bush administration for misleading it into a war which brought a few brief days of triumph followed by three long years of mounting failures and humiliations. There may also be a perverse desire to punish Republican candidates who have chosen to forget their once-enthusiastic backing for the Iraqi invasion and now bitterly condemn their president.

This craven political opportunism is repellent, the more so as some Republicans now even suggest that from the beginning, they had strongly suspected the present debacle would be the outcome. The reason they held their peace, they explain, was out of loyalty to the Republican White House. Some loyalty!

There may be grim satisfaction in the Middle East if the US administration is humbled electorally the same way it has been humbled politically, strategically and tactically in Iraq. But short of impeachment for fabricating a casus belli which has thus far cost over 650,000 lives, Bush will see out his last two years of office. He will have earned his place in history as one of the more inept occupants of the Oval Office.

All 435 House seats, 33 Senate seats and 36 governorships are at stake in the voting. Democrats need to pick up 15 House seats and six Senate seats to claim majorities and take control of each chamber. Such a sweeping Democratic victory giving it control of both houses of Congress will in fact change little except to block any of the outgoing president’s fall-back programs designed to salvage a little of his reputation. The chaos and bloodshed the Coalition has caused in Iraq will deepen and worsen.

As Ronald Reagan’s Republicans did to the well-meaning Jimmy Carter, so now the Democrats will be anxious to help George W. Bush make every mistake he can think of.

Washington’s slavish support for Israel will hardly miss a beat even if there is a profound political change on Capitol Hill and beyond. The Republicans support an aggressive, expansionist Israel as a matter of politics. Reagan stole the southern states from the Democrats and later Bush took away the Zionist lobby from them.

By contrast, Democratic support for Zionism is a matter of principle. Such an inflexible approach promises that first and foremost Israeli concerns will be listened to in a Democratic White House. Only after Israeli demands have been met will consideration be given to the equally legitimate problems of the Arab world.

All politics is local. Tuesday when Americans start voting, it will be about their neighborhood concerns and their frustration at the apparent powerlessness of the mighty US military which has been unable to get the job in Iraq done. Few tears will be shed — and even fewer votes cast — on behalf of the Iraqis whose profound tragedy is a direct result of Bush’s policies.