With Democrats in power, is it still America, or is it not?

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

November 11, 2006

The US 2006 mid-term election is history and democrats are in power in Congress. Some say the election result is a repudiation of Bush policies.  So, how different will the policies for the US and the rest of the world be with Democrats in charge of Congress?

One issue has to be moved out of the way while we wait for answers: For once in the six years of the Bush administration, Democrats agree that the elections went without any electoral mischief.

No cries of "stolen or suppressed votes'  were heard this time. Democrats and their fellow hard-left members were pacified. Florida 2000, the undergirding of the left angst against Bush was behind us. 

The quietude on the election’s result leaves one to wonder whether there were any votes ever stolen in American electoral history. 

The integrity of American elections demands an answer.

There is one issue that America cannot be silent on.  And it is the one issue that brought Bush so much trouble.  America’s superpower status. a status that cannot be avoided, the world's only superpower for now; Democrats in power or not.

And the privileges or abuses of this power are not going to change much since they are matters of perception as seen through a prism erected for all by the rest of the world itself.

America will still be America to Al Qaeda, Bush or not.

Iran is not going to love America if Congress should insist that it builds its nuclear armament. And neither would North Korea.

As for Sudan, accusations of genocide from a Democrat-controlled Congress would not make it embrace America any sooner than it would Sudanese Of African descent in the Darfur region.

In Iraq, the change in the political scene in America has been felt by Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis alike. But the merit of the Bush invasion and the consequent removal of Saddam Hussein from power are issues that Democrats, despite their electoral victory, will have to leave to history.

One thing is certain though. The props for Bush's legacy have been removed. The mid-term election result can deny or set his legacy.

Like Bush or not, the fact is he has been firm and decisive on many matters. Yes, he went against the UN on Iraq. But the serious side of world affairs is that there are problems the world would like to see the UN stand firm on; issues of genocide and crimes against humanity being two of those issues.

So, when Bush calls the violence in the Darfur genocide, it would be hard for Democrats to refute the claim. How they respond to it is another matter.

John Kerry, a Democrat and onetime presidential hopeful would like to depend on the UN for answers to the problems of genocide.  He once claimed that the UN could have done a better job in Iraq than Bush.

As bold as Kerry's statement is, in terms of its obvious fallacy, it also calls up the opportunity to examine the effectiveness of UN actions in the face of global conflicts.

The UN Security Council has a history of failures dating back to Rwanda, Cambodia, and beyond.

The extermination of Kurds and Shiites in Iraq under Saddam Hussein went unabated until the Bush invasion. And now there is this new situation in Darfur.

Once again, the UN Security Council has been immobilized in the face of trouble.  

Just this Friday, November 10, 2006, the Security Council members decided that they could not agree "on what message" or the "size of delegation' to send to Addis Ababa where Sudanese and AU officials would be meeting to discuss matters affecting the status of the current AU troop in Darfur.

Bush has called for action on Darfur.  But his options are very limited, with Democrats soon to be in charge of Congress after the 2006 mid-term elections.  He can't be bold against Sudan as he was with Iraq.

Bush was the first to note the limitation of his options.  The first indication was when he quickly accepted the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, his Secretary of Defense, after having stonewalled for months demands by mostly Democrats for Rumsfeld's ouster because of the change in the balance of power in Congress

That move, a smart one, removes one excuse for political theater by Democrats when the new Congress turns up next year.  Even if an investigation of Rumsfeld would follow it would not hold the same attraction as it would were he to have stayed in office.

But there are still issues leftover that the new Democrat-controlled Congress would have to pursue if they want to be seen as the party with answers to America current problems and not just vocal critics of the Bush regime.

For one, they are on record for promising to impeach Bush. Talk about this impeachment started in earnest when NY Times revealed that "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts" and that there was a secret NSA surveillance program in 2005.

John Kerry, the man Bush vanquished in 2004, claimed that there were "solid grounds" for impeachment. And by December 18, 2005, Congressman John Conyers, a Democrat, had a bill in Congress ready and waiting for that eventuality.

None other than the infamous John Dean of Watergate fame agreed that the admission was an "impeachable offense."  Dean of Watergate fame can pretend to know. He almost got Nixon impeached.

Bush had admitted he had authorized the NSA program but could he be impeached? Not possible. The threat was pure political bluster for pinning down the Republicans for the 2006 elections. That objective has been met.  You can, therefore, bet that the appetite for impeachment is gone.

Also gone will be the threat to pull out American troops immediately from Iraq.

Regardless of their pre-election rhetoric, the sobering fact is that it wasn't the hard left of the Democrat party that won the elections for the Democrats.  Though the left wanted badly out of Iraq, many of the Democrat victors ran as conservative candidates.

Webb of Virginia was a Regan Republican. Bob Casey who beat Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, was a social conservative on many issues.

However, it is still a good victory for Democrats. The only bad side of the news was that Al Qaeda also claimed victory the very moment the 2006 mid-term results were declared for the Democrats.

While we wait for scholars to "nuance" the actual meaning of the Al Qaeda claim, you can be sure that finding Schumer, a Democrat from New York and one of the most partisan members of the Senate, on television proposing a bipartisan spirit in Congress could be one the most incongruous moment in politics.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Washington, DC, November 11, 2006