Democratic Resurgence in Washington Is No Cause for Celebration

It took six years, but American voters have demonstrated a belated understanding of what people virtually everywhere else have known for years: George W. Bush is a dangerous cowboy who needs to be restrained. It is only natural that Arabs and Muslims were the first to sound the alarm about the threat posed to international peace and stability by Bush's post-9/11 conversion to unilateral interventionism: The peoples of the Middle East have been paying the price for official US duplicity and ignorance for decades, and Bush's reign has only exacerbated the situation by adding equal doses of unrealistic dogma and invincible roguishness. What remains to be seen is whether the rebuke delivered by American voters will be reflected in US policies overseas, and there is little reason for optimism.

One practical obstacle to meaningful change is the fact that Bush's Republican allies have lost the House of Representatives - and possible the Senate as well - to a crop of Democrats hobbled by a congenital inability to define a platform of coherent policies on issues great and small. The only exception to this general rule is no cause for comfort: Democrats are even more dependent, financially and politically, on the pro-Israel lobby than Republicans. This means that Washington's mindless support for the Jewish state's intransigent approach to the Middle East's core problem - the Palestinian-Israeli conflict - is likely to remain intact. Given the impunity this grants Israel's government, expect more incidents like Wednesday's massacre of 18 Palestinians, including 13 from a single family, in Gaza. Also, expect Palestinian militants to eventually lose patience and end their de facto moratorium on suicide bombings that target Israeli civilians.

Another reason for pessimism is the shamelessness with which the same Democratic Party has rolled over in the face of Bush's expansive vision of his "war on terrorism." There has been some sniping over the past couple of years, especially over Iraq, but by and large Democrats have looked the other way as the Bush administration has unabashedly demonstrated its disregard for both international and American law.

This leads to a third probability that bodes ill for stability in this and other parts of the world: Historically, US presidents who have abused the office in a bid to expand the power of the presidency (Richard Nixon and the impotent administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter that followed come inevitably to mind) have triggered backlashes of unwieldy oversight conditions that undermine the executive branch's ability to act forcefully and quickly. As Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen noted on Wednesday, "the world needs a vigorous USA" - and thanks to Bush, it is unlikely to have one again for quite some time.