LONDON: This is a commentary on the diminished state of consultative democracy just now. The least considered aspect of the war against terrorism is that a loyalty test - are you pro- or anti-American? - has become the obligatory standard against which deductions are made about anything written on American foreign policy.

For in the land of the first amendment, the normal rules of discourse are now blurred. The possibility of civilised people, all sharing the same loyalty, disagreeing about the right way forward is much attenuated.

A single label can be made to wipe out every nuance. If you are not with me, you may be proving that you are not a patriot. President Bush’s state of the union address was redolent of the triumphalism and alarm that obliterate every alternative mind-set.

What is the evidence that there really are “tens of thousands of trained terrorists still at large”? We begin to understand that in Bush’s mind the Afghan campaign, aided by the Northern Alliance, may have been the easy bit - compared with destroying the nebulous cohorts now being sought by the same US agencies that have been unable to track down the anthrax terrorist in their own backyard.

So he was preparing Americans for the long haul. They do still prefer other people to take the human risks. They would not put troops on the ground to seal the Pakistan border, which may be how Osama bin Laden escaped. Though the special forces are there, the Northern Alliance locals do most of the dirty work.

But it is a fight for a world cause, and it is being run by the US: one command, one air force, a unifying intelligence, an uncomplicated national will and no Jacques Chirac poking his nose into daily targeting decisions as he did in Kosovo.

The state of the union address had certain blank bits. There were important absences. Only fleeting references were allowed to any other country. It was as if these other participants in the drama barely existed, which in terms of the military effort was, by US choice, true enough, but which, as a diplomatic statement, seemed both ignorant and dangerous. The need for the coalition was perfunctorily acknowledged, but not the faintest doubt was allowed to attach to the fact that it would continue to operate on US terms.

Other voices especially European voices are bringing up the priority of a Middle East peace process being resumed, or publicly insist on codes of behaviour in the Guantanamo prison camp that rest on different attitudes to human rights than those now prevailing in war-torn US.

Bush is pushing more recklessly ahead with the unilateralist wrecking of the Kyoto treaty and the international criminal court. The killing of the ABM treaty is a done deal. Nuclear testing is blithely listed for resumption. Nuclear warhead reductions agreed with Moscow may be scuppered by a Bush decision to store his own dismantled warheads anyway, just in case. The White House has begun to ruminate that, like ABM, the Geneva Conventions may be suddenly unsuitable to the new era.

Post-Afghanistan, this seems to be the new reality. But it carries costs, which a pro-American should be the first to lament.

First, it negates the notion of a world community of self-respecting nations, many of which have much to contribute to making this a safer place. In George Bush’s US, there is evidently little room for a sense of noblesse oblige.

This US is an alliance-builder only for her national purposes. World power surely carries the responsibility to look wider, towards a benign shaping of decisions that are collective not unilateral.

Second, though the campaign against Al Qaeda has far to go. Bush’s own account of the nightmares he is trying to pre-empt makes that very clear. How can he hope to do it solely through the might of US power and intelligence? Bush paid lip service to US values in his speech: ”human dignity, rule of law, free speech and equal justice”. But in the face of homeland hubris, what price words? —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.