"For the moment, courtesy of the bombers, George W. Bush is the complete master of his domestic political arena."

America gives an unmistakable impression of being the nation united that so many of its citizens regularly invoke in their daily pledge of allegiance to the flag. The polls show overwhelming support for a US military response. President George W. Bush enjoys record approval ratings, up 35 per cent since the bombers struck.

The national mood has surged up and over Capitol Hill. The previously divided Congress, which Mr Bush addressed in joint session yesterday, has suddenly become an infinitely compliant bipartisan body after months of angry inter-party manoeuvring. Last week, the Senate voted by 98-0 to give the President wide powers to lead the American response, while the House of Representatives followed suit by 420-1.

Since September 11, indeed, the Congress has twice responded to White House emergency funding calls by going far further than Mr Bush had asked it to. At the weekend, asked for $US20 billion ($A40.5billion) in emergency funding, the Congress promptly gave $40billion. On Thursday, they came up with a $24billion aid package for the airline industry, which more than doubled what the administration was asking for.

Nothing, though, better illustrates the post-September 11 political mood in Washington than the announcement from the Senate Democrats that they are dropping all efforts to scrutinise Mr Bush's missile defence plans. In the three months since they took control of the Senate, the Democrats had gradually begun to challenge the president's missile shield theology and planning. Their leaders had all made critical speeches about the missile shield's effect on America's place in the world. They had inserted important clauses into the Pentagon budget to ensure congressional approval would be needed for any spending which might breach the 1971 anti-ballistic missile treaty. On Wednesday, the Democrats promptly dropped them.

Ever since September 11, in other words, the Democrats have decided they have no alternative but to support anything and everything the president proposes. For the moment, courtesy of the bombers, Mr Bush is the complete master of his domestic political arena.

One should not belittle the reasons that have brought this about. Americans believe they are the innocent victims of a monstrous wrong - and they are correct. The nation has inevitably drawn together in grief, shock and outrage. As in all wars, real or imagined, speaking out of line carries a heavy political penalty.

Yet, while politics in much of the rest of the democratic world grapples with the options and attempts to weigh the wisdom and consequences of particular courses of action - a process also taking place inside the US administration itself - American democracy seems intellectually paralysed and unable to play a role that is vitally necessary for both the US and the wider world.

It is not true, in fact, that all Americans are of one mind about what the US should do now. From the White House itself, down to more than 150 college campuses across the US that took days of action for "peaceful justice" on Thursday, there is debate taking place in America. On the streets, too, there is a marginal but articulate anti-war movement. The polls themselves do not show total unanimity. In the American newspapers, serious commentators of right and left are also weighing the issues.

The one place where we hear nothing of this debate, however, is in the American political arena. It's not that there are suddenly no differences there, just that they are not being aired.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, for example, is one who is prepared to caution against US action but who will not run the risk of putting his vote where his mouth is. "If all you do is create a lot of innocent victims and wind up with a more radical Islamic state in Pakistan with nuclear weapons, are you safer?" Senator Kerry asks. "We have an obligation to ask those questions. Patriotism isn't blind." Exactly. But Senator Kerry is eyeing a run for the White House in 2004, so he says these things in the Boston Globe rather than on the Senate floor.

Eleven days have now passed since the attack. Politics has moved on to a debate about responses. So where are the American internationalists when we need them?

GUARDIAN