Follow the Leaders.(The Talk of the Town)(George W. Bush)

Regime change was one of the stated goals of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Unlike cleansing the place of weapons of mass destruction and breaking up the alleged Baghdad-Al Qaeda nexus, it was a reality-based goal; and, unlike the other two (which were as unattainable and unnecessary as ridding the moon of green cheese), it was actually accomplished. Saddam Hussein's regime has indeed been changed--though what it has been changed into, of course, is not quite what was intended.

And regime change, it turns out, is infectious--a militarily transmittable disease, almost invariably fatal, so far, to any political party or head of government so careless of hygiene as to have had intimate relations with the Bush Administration's Mesopotamian misadventure. The contagion set in less than a year into the war, when, three days after the Madrid terrorist bombings of March 11, 2004, Spain's conservative government, which had sent thirteen hundred soldiers to Iraq, was defeated at the polls. The soldiers were out within three months. In May of 2005, it was the turn of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, of Italy, President Bush's loudest West European supporter, who had sent three thousand troops; his successor, Romano Prodi, brought them home. In June of this year, Tony Blair was finally obliged to relinquish his grip on Britain's Labour government, largely because of Iraq; the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has signalled that he intends to withdraw Britain's troops--some five thousand of the original commitment of forty-five thousand remain--by the end of 2008. Six weeks ago, Poland's premier, the twin brother of the country's President, lost to an opponent whose platform included bringing back the nine hundred Polish troops that are still in Iraq. Other countries whose voters have dispensed with the services of leaders who enrolled them in Bush's "coalition of the willing" include Hungary, Ukraine, Norway, and Slovakia.

A week ago last Saturday, John Howard, the second-longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia, became the newest casualty of this political epidemic. Howard's case is unusual, both for the slavishness with which he has followed Bush's lead and for the comprehensiveness of his defeat. After a decade in office, and at a time of widespread economic contentment, his center-right coalition was decisively ousted at every level of government. He even lost his parliamentary seat. His fealty to Bush, not only on Iraq but also, and at least as important, on climate change, was, of course, not the only factor. But it colored everything.

Two episodes helped solidify the public's fed-upness. As close observers of our own election campaign may recall, the Australian Prime Minister greeted Barack Obama's entry into the Presidential race--and his proposal, at about the same time, for an American withdrawal from Iraq by next March--with a sneer. "If I was running Al Qaeda in Iraq," Howard said, "I would put a circle around March, 2008, and pray as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats." Kevin Rudd, then the leader of Australia's opposition, now Prime Minister-elect, gave him hell for this. But the crispest rebuke came from Obama himself, who, after calling the attack flattering, said, "I would also note that we have close to a hundred and forty thousand troops on the ground now, and my understanding is that Mr. Howard has deployed fourteen hundred. So if he's ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he call up another twenty thousand Australians and send them to Iraq. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric." This point, which an Australian politician might find it awkward to make, exposed the gap between Howard's talk of the civilizational imperative of victory in Iraq and the ...