- The Democrats will do their best to take us back to the failed appeasement foreign policy of the Clinton years.
- At worst, we could see a repeat of the 1970s abandonment of Vietnam by a Democrat Congress.
- And Bush's response looks like making things worse. By turning to dinosaurs like James Baker and Robert Gates, he looks like returning to the failed, Saudi-friendly realpolitik foreign policy of Bush senior.
- Maybe all the American people wanted was two-party rule
(it is absolutely the norm for the president to lose Congress in his second mid-terms),
and maybe they were motivated by many different issues, including many local issues,
but the effect on the war effort could be serious.
This could prolong the war by decades, and allow Iran become a nuclear power.
Time will tell how bad this is.
But it doesn't look good.
- Here's an interesting thing: The media claims this election was all about the war. And yet when Bush won in 2004, the media denied it was all about the war, and claimed it was about religion, or something. But surely when Bush is running himself, the election is far more likely to be about the war than when he is not running at all, and voters are choosing local representatives based on a vast range of local issues?
- I'm sure the war was part of it, but I suspect the media are exaggerating. Many people are unhappy with the war. But I do not think the American people want to withdraw in failure, as Islamist fundamentalists and left-wingers everywhere in the world hope. Many conservatives are unhappy with Bush because they want to win, and Bush has been drifting.
- Be that as it may, the effect of electing Democrats - and panicking Bush into abandoning neo-conservatism for old realpolitik - may be to lose the war.
- European appeasers and defeatists celebrate. As Denis Boyles says, American voters might be amazed to see some of the reactions: "American voters .. may have been impatient but might not have realized they were voting to legitimize the humiliation of the US military."
- Islamists in the Middle East celebrate.
- Syria celebrates.
- Hamas celebrates.
- Iranian enemy leader Ayatollah Khamenei celebrates: "This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush’s hawkish policies in the world. ... Since Washington’s hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."
- Iran thinks it is safe from attack now.
-
Al Qaeda celebrate.
They clearly view the election as a victory for them:
"you aren’t the ones who won the midterm elections,
nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen
— the Muslim Ummah’s vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq
— are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost"
-
Al Qaeda in Iraq celebrate
(and here):
"Now the American nation has put their foot on the beginning of the right path
to save them from their crisis, so they voted for something reasonable in the latest elections
... Will the politicians keep their promises by bringing back their boys from Iraq
from the lion's hand
...
They are getting ready to leave,
because they are no longer capable of staying"
- Al Qaeda in Iraq celebrate Rumsfeld's sacking, which the enemy clearly sees as a victory for them. They hate and fear Bush and Rumsfeld, and clearly have no fear of Democrats leading the war: "I tell the lame duck [Bush], don't rush to escape as your lame and midget defense secretary [Rumsfeld] did, for we haven't yet had enough of your blood. Stand fast in the battlefield you coward, for we know the Romans [Westerners] are not ashamed of defeat." They call Bush "the most stupid president".
- Again and again, it must be said, if evil people don't like you, there must be something right about you. And likewise, Democrats and left-wing Europeans should consider, if evil people like you, there must be something wrong with you. Aren't the Democrats worried that America's enemies see their election as a good thing?
- He notes perhaps Bush's greatest failing: "[Post-WW2] Germany and Japan had no neighbours like Iran and Syria, destabilizing Iraq by feeding weapons and jihadis into the country. The American and British refusal, from the outset, to make Iran and Syria pay, and pay heavily for their meddling, was noted and thoroughly exploited by the enemy."
- And he remembers Vietnam all too well: "My 21st birthday happened to coincide with the final evacuation of Saigon. From my modest experience on the ground in that country, I knew what was coming next. The boat people were no surprise to me. I think that was the day I fully realized, in adult terms, that evil often prevails in this world. ... The fate that will befall all those millions of courageous Iraqis, showing the dye on their fingers after they had voted - in defiance of all the terror threats - will not come as a surprise to me, either. They are being sold out, as the Vietnamese were before them."
- The modern western voter may not have the staying power for a long war. America is "the first superpower with ADHD". In response to an immediate attack, the US is not like Spain. It will fight, but soon it loses interest, so the end result is the same: "we are all Spaniards now".
- "You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections - 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada - but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense."
- "What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. ... we're in a very dark place right now."
Update 2007:
Bush didn't buy it!
