Oh George, what will we do when you're gone?

Our columnist on an easy target for America-bashers

Somewhere, deep down, tucked away underneath their loathing for George Bush, in a secret place where the lights of smart dinner-party conversation and clever debating-society repartee never shine, the growing hordes of America-bashers must dread the moment he leaves office.

When President Bush goes into the Texas sunset, and especially if he is replaced by an enlightened, world-embracing Democrat, their one excuse, their sole explanation for all human suffering in the world will disappear too. And they may just find that the world is not as simple as they thought it was.

It's been a great ride for the past six years, hasn't it? George Bush and Dick Cheney and all those pantomime villains that succour him — the gay-bashing foot soldiers of the religious Right, the forktailed neoconservatives with their devotion to Israel, the dark titans of American corporate boardrooms spewing their carbon emissions above the pristine European skies. Having those guys around for so long provided a comfortable substitute for thinking hard about global challenges, a kind of intellectual escapism.

When one group of Muslims explodes bombs underneath the school buses of another group of Muslims in Baghdad or cuts the heads off humanitarian workers in Anbar, blame George Bush. When Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, denounces an imbalanced world and growls about the unpleasantness of democracy in eastern Europe, blame George Bush. When the Earth's atmosphere gets a little more clogged with the output of power plants in China, India and elsewhere, blame George Bush.

Some day soon, though, this escapism will run into the dead end of reality. In fact, the most compelling case for the American people to elect a Democrat as president next year is that, in the US, leadership in a time of war requires the inclusion of both political parties, and in the rest of the world, people will have to start thinking about what is really the cause of all our woes.

Take a look at the miserable mess that is unfolding in what is supposed to be the "West's" fight in Afghanistan against the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Afghanistan was, remember, unlike Iraq, "the good war". Within days of September 11, 2001, all the European members of Nato readily signed up to assist America in righting the wrongs of international terrorism by defeating the Kabul regime and its allies.

Even after the alliance fell out over the Iraq war, those who opposed that conflict reiterated their dedication to winning the one in Afghanistan. When the Spanish socialists pulled their nation's troops out of Iraq in 2004, they insisted they were fully committed to the war against the Taleban.

But what is the state of that struggle? These days, despite the notional presence of a Nato force involving more than 15 countries, only a handful — Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, and plucky Lithuania included — are putting anything like the effort required in terms of resources and willingness to take the fight to the enemy.

Others — such as the Germans and the French — will commit troops and equipment but won't let them fight, preferring noncombatant roles. Last week the Italian Government collapsed because some of its members actually want to make friends with the Taleban. European countries are not failing to fight the war in Afghanistan because they don't like George Bush. They lack either the perception of the threat or the will to deal with it.

Does anyone really think the election of President Hillary Clinton will be greeted with a sudden surge of German and French troops to Kabul and Helmand, routing al-Qaeda militants in the name of multilateralism?

President Barack Obama will find that when he wants to make good on his promise to win the war in Afghanistan, EU leaders will be much happier explaining how their new constitution will enlighten the world.

President John Edwards will discover, when he seeks a united front to tackle an enemy that would happily incinerate every European city and its inhabitants tomorrow, that the Europeans would much rather take urgent action to address the risk that global warming will produce a possible 18cm increase in sea levels by 2100.

This escapism is not confined to President Bush's critics in Europe, as the current battle over Iraq in Congress demonstrates. The Democrats have majorities in both houses. They could, if they wished, move to end the war in Iraq, which most of them — having once supported it — now oppose. They could vote to cut off funding for US troops and force the Pentagon to bring them home.

But they won't do that. That would involve taking responsibility for a dangerous war. They would much rather, carp and cavil and pass "nonbinding" resolutions that express dissatisfaction with the war but leave the actual job of ending it to the Bush Administration.

This is why it may be a good thing if Americans were to elect a Democrat next year. Certainly, he or she could change the tone of US diplomacy by speaking more contritely about Iraq, by sounding more concerned about climate change, perhaps even by agreeing to hold talks talk with the Iranians to try to persuade them to drop their nuclear programme.

But it's likely that sooner or later a Democrat would have to have his or her "Nixon Goes to China" moment. Just as Bill Clinton discovered in the 1990s, when the Europeans were happy to sit back and let Serbs slaughter Bosnian and Kosovan Muslims, a Democrat will find a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the task.

In the dread modern vernacular of management-speak, the Democrats need to take ownership of American leadership in a turbulent world. Though it can be fairly argued that President Bush's incompetence has made things worse, the challenge of radical Islamism was not invented by the Bush Administration.

Even as some future Democratic president proclaims his commitment to renewing alliances, he is sure to be greeted with all kinds of explanations as to why the Europeans are just not quite ready to make that a joint ownership. When that moment comes, everyone will be urgently wishing they still had George Bush to blame.