WorldView: The US electorate voted massively (up 50 per cent on 2002) against the lies, incompetence and cronyism of the Bush administration. Voters particularly came out against the Iraq misadventure.
US citizens, parties and presidential hopefuls fervently want Iraq off the agenda before the 2008 elections. All eyes are now turned to the Iraq Study Group under former secretary of state James Baker which is due to report in December.
Such groups are usually appointed for one of two reasons: either nobody has any real idea of what needs to be done; or everybody accepts an obvious, but controversial decision, and wants a non-partisan voice to announce it. The emphasis was probably on the first when Congress established the study group. It has now switched to the second.
The bipartisan group, largely composed of loyal followers of the "realpolitik" school as opposed to the ideological never-never land of the Bush White House, must first determine where its loyalties lie.
If its loyalty is to the Bush White House, its recommendations will be timid and largely irrelevant. If, on the other hand, it decides its first loyalty is to the United States, it can explore more radical options, albeit from a restrictive menu.
Iraq is now in a state of virtual civil war, its nascent institutions faltering with the 130,000-strong strike force of the US army haemorrhaging slowly and pointlessly. If there ever were any good US options in Iraq, they are long dead.
As Richard Haass, president of the US Council on Foreign Relations, told Der Spiegel, "We've reached a point in Iraq where we've got to get real. The Iraq situation is not winnable."
The best Washington can hope for is a slight stabilisation providing a window of opportunity for semi-respectable withdrawal. Should Iraq slide into complete civil war, extracting US personnel would make Dunkerque look like a vicarage tea party.
None of the nations in the region relish the prospect of chaos in Iraq. Iraq is the knot that ties together the post-first World War Anglo-French organisation of those former Ottoman territories. Kurdish independence could threaten Turkish, Iranian and Syrian stability every bit as much as destroy Iraq.
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad bleakly predicts that "When the ethnic-religious break occurs in one country, it will not fail to occur elsewhere, too. It would be as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, only much worse. Large wars, small wars - no one will be able to get a grip on the consequences."
Tony Blair told the study group, "The biggest single factor in getting moderate Muslim countries to support a new Iraq would be if there was progress on Israel and Palestine."
The US needs as much help as it can get from all the countries in the region. Will Baker take the plunge of proposing a regional conference, some Middle Eastern version of the post-Napoleonic Congress of Vienna? Close colleagues such as Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush Senior, have publicly urged him to do so.
The only real opposition to such a collective approach comes from two lame-duck, politically bankrupt and militarily incompetent governments, those of George W Bush and of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.
Olmert's bizarre statement during his US visit last week makes complete sense in this context alone. "We in the Middle East have followed the American policy in Iraq for a long time, and we are very much impressed and encouraged by the stability which the great operation of America in Iraq brought to the Middle East."
The White House can neither ignore nor deride Baker's recommendations, leaving Jerusalem with an uncomfortable choice between opposing the US or abandoning its pathetic hawkishness.
Pathetic hawkishness is all Olmert's government has left. Its proposals for unilateral withdrawal are politically dead; its military madness in Lebanon and Gaza has not only failed, it has succeeded in the difficult task of making a bad situation worse. On Thursday, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni "rejected out of hand" a new peace initiative sponsored by Spain, Italy and France.
Jerusalem is nervous. Its coalition only survived by inviting the ultra-hardliner Avidgor Lieberman to become deputy prime minister. This hawkish lurch gives Olmert 78 votes in the 120-seat Knesset, but has reduced the poll standing of Labour leader and defence minister Amir Peretz to 1 per cent.
A clash between acute US self-interest and Jerusalem could empower Israel's rational voices.
On November 4th, more than 100,000 people gathered in Tel Aviv for the Rabin anniversary to be addressed by their country's leading author and a central figure of the Israeli left, David Grossman, whose 20-year-old son Uri was killed in action last August.
Grossman starkly analysed today's Israel - "It is not easy to take a look at ourselves this year . . . our military might ultimately cannot be the only guarantee of our existence . . . the very existence of the state of Israel is a miracle . . . a political, national, human miracle . . . Israel has been squandering, not only the lives of its sons, but also its miracle . . ."
Grossman then appealed to Israel's leaders. "Our military and political leadership is hollow . . . Mr Prime Minister . . . your success is important to me, because the future of all of us depends on our ability to act."
Grossman voiced what most acknowledge: "Any reasonable person in Israel, and . . . in Palestine too, knows exactly the outline of a possible solution to the conflict."
Grossman and Baker make for unlikely allies-in-realism, yet as Palmerston famously told the House of Commons, nations have neither eternal allies nor perpetual enemies, only interests that those who would lead them have a duty to follow.
Let us hope James Baker has the courage to do so.
(Full text of Grossman's speech: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/784034.html)
Tony Kinsella is an author and commentator on international affairs. He is based in France.