From Le Monde Diplomatique

THE re-election of George Bush as president of the United States is a serious setback for the spirit of American democracy; the US has the longest-standing democracy in the world and is therefore a fundamental reference point. This time at least there are no technical reasons that can be blamed for the result. Nobody can contest the legitimacy of the election. Exercising their rights, the US electorate voted as they wished to vote (1). The result confirms that although democracy may be the least imperfect of political regimes, it is still capable of making choices that bring to power dangerous demagogues.

What is disturbing is that Bush is now the most massively elected candidate in US electoral history. This is disturbing because he misled the people and lied to Congress to get authorisation for a “preventive war” (not authorised by the UN) and the invasion of Iraq; he encouraged a disproportionate use of force and caused the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians (2); he ignored President Gerald Ford’s 1976 executive order (still in effect) that bans the secret services from assassinating foreign leaders, and ordered the execution of supposed terrorists (3); he violated the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war; he allowed torture in Abu Ghraib prison and other secret detention centres.

At home he has created a new climate of McCarthyism, under which any citizen suspected of having links with an enemy organisation is considered guilty by association.

With such a dire record any other leader would have been seen as politically undesirable and shunned by the civilised world. Not so George Bush. He is the president of the world’s sole hyperpower and occupies centre stage in world politics.

His second term seems set to continue the policies of the first. His first two government appointments show that he views his election victory as a vote of confidence in his policies. The choice of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General is a direct rebuff to those who have criticised the torture of those prisoners accused of terrorism. As the president’s legal adviser, he created the structure designed to sidestep the Geneva Conventions by defining prisoners of war from Afghanistan and Iraq as “enemy combatants” and then arranged the framework for the Guantánamo detention facility. He had no hesitation in removing the ban on using physical pressure on prisoners, in contravention of both US law and international treaties, on the pretext that “the president’s authority to conduct war” is total (4).

As for Condoleezza Rice’s appointment to the State Department, this must be seen as a victory for the hardline unilateralism of the authoritarian Republicans who surround the president, a victory confirmed by the fresh threats now being made against Iran.

The inability of the armed forces to contain and defeat the insurgents in Iraq has highlighted the limitations of the military option. A similar realisation seems to have dawned on Ariel Sharon, Bush’s main ally in the Middle East, at the moment of Yasser Arafat’s death.

Apparently the Israeli prime minister has realised that the Palestinians’ capacity to suffer remains higher than his army’s capacity for inflicting hurt (although we may wonder whether he will draw the appropriate lessons from this revelation).

Are we justified in living in hope? Is it possible that one day George Bush will finally realise that the negative aspects of globalisation – the aggravation of the poverty of the poor, the global injustice, the regional rivalry, the climatic deregulation – can only degenerate into conflicts unless they are countered by multilateral joint action? And that one country does not have the right to lay down the law to everybody?



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