The overthrow of Saddam could unlock peace in the Middle East

And as long as America seems weak, many Palestinians will believe that there is no need to do a deal with Israel

Tom Ridge, the United States' Director of Homeland Security, is the unluckiest man in American politics. Two years ago he was the young, popular and respected Republican Governor of Pennsylvania who was widely tipped to be George Bush's running mate, and a possible future President.

Had he got the call, life might have been easier for Mr Bush, because Mr Ridge's popularity would have enabled the Republicans to carry Pennsylvania, instead of losing it by five per cent. George Bush would then have been President fair and square, instead of spending his transition period in a flurry of dimpled chads and court actions.

But Mr Ridge did not get the nomination for two reasons: one negative, the other positive. On abortion, he is pro-choice and has no wish to reopen the battles over Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court judgement which invented a constitutional right to abortion, and which is loathed by American conservatives. It was felt, therefore, that Mr Ridge would alienate the religious right, thus jeopardising key Southern states which would have more than outweighed Pennsylvania. That was almost certainly a miscalculation, but it helped to cost Mr Ridge the vice-presidency, especially as Mr Bush had a positive reason for making a different choice.

Dick Cheney is admirably qualified for high office. He was also the ideal partner for a younger presidential candidate with no background in foreign affairs. Calm, wise, dignified, laconic and statesmanlike, Mr Cheney not only reassured American voters. He reassured Mr Bush.

But bringing Dick Cheney on to the ticket carried an electoral risk. His home state, Wyoming, brings in only three electoral college votes – one-tenth of Pennsylvania's – and it is always seen as a Republican certainty. So choosing Cheney was an indication of the Bush team's confidence. It was almost misplaced.

Anyway, Vice-President or no, Tom Ridge was still the name to conjure with. It was likely that at some early stage he would become a national figure. Then came 11 September. As a governor of a big state, Mr Ridge had executive experience. As an articulate, charming and forceful fellow, he had leadership skills and he, too, could do his bit for reassurance. As a near miss for Vice-President, he had political authority; when necessary, he could kick ass. He seemed the ideal choice for Director of Homeland Security.

Then everything went wrong. Mr Ridge inherited a fundamental problem. Americans had been so complacent about their homeland's security that the basic structures were lacking. If that were not a big enough difficulty, the President unwittingly created a further one. As Director, Mr Ridge was not in the Cabinet, merely a member of the White House staff. This made it hard for him to exercise clout, especially when his authority was diminishing by the hour. He was unfairly blamed for the deficiencies existing in the system which he inherited.

Everything he was trying to do was already the province of some other department, and in every political system in the world, it is in the nature of government departments to guard their turf. So while Mr Ridge was still trying to ensure that his new team had enough desks, offices and parking lots, other agencies of government were trying to ensure that his functions and power were curbed. They ought to have taken the blame for the obvious weaknesses in domestic security, to which they had contributed by past negligence. Instead, however, the flack was directed at Mr Ridge, who suffered an almost terminal loss of prestige.

Yet it is not his fault that the FBI and the CIA had not established an effective working relationship. Nor was it his fault that nine months into the Bush presidency, the CIA was still behaving as if Bill Clinton was in the White House. He had been notoriously uninterested in briefings on Islamic terrorism – as if the bad news would go away merely because he decided to take no notice. That ought to have changed as soon as Mr Bush was inaugurated. But a deplorable lag had ensued.

Homeland security is now to become a Cabinet post, though it remains to be seen whether Mr Ridge can rebuild his position. Far too slowly, the Americans are realising that they need some equivalent of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, which co-ordinates all secret-service and intelligence work. Effective intelligence cannot exist in a vacuum; it is always the creature of war or deadly threat. Our JIC became sharper as a result of challenges in Northern Ireland. The US equivalent will owe its prominence to the enduring threat of domestic terrorism.

The Americans are aware that such terrorism does not exist in a geo-political vacuum and that the threats to the Hudson Valley originated in the Jordan Valley. This does not mean that they are any nearer to solving the Palestinian problem. Indeed, when I was in Washington recently, I detected an impatience with the minutiae of the Israel-Palestine question and a belief that the answer lies in strategic radicalism.

I would put the obvious argument: that if America were to act against Saddam before demonstrating its willingness to broker a deal broadly acceptable to Palestinians, chaos would follow in the Arab world, with the fall of friendly regimes. I would then be accused of misjudging the point of leverage. I was told that it was not a question of solving Palestine in order to create the moral momentum for forcible regime-change in Iraq, and more a matter of using Iraqi regime change to create a balance of forces in the Arab world which would open up possibilities in Palestine.

Those who argue in this way have a point. As long as Saddam is in power, America will look weak. As long as America seems weak, many Palestinians will believe that a deal is not necessary; that they should suffer on while hitting Israelis, in the belief that they can eventually break their will. Such Palestinians will also be emboldened by the likelihood of further anti-Western terrorism.

Were Saddam to fall, the Middle East would look very different. Once a moderate, pro-Western regime was installed in Baghdad, shortly to be followed by another in Tehran, terrorist fantasies would have less scope; and Arabs who accept the need to co-exist with the West – and with Israel – would have much more political space. Today, much of the Middle East seems locked in a sterile confrontation between fundamentalist street politics and oppressive regimes. The overthrow of Saddam could be the unlocking mechanism.

Now that the US has given up on Yasser Arafat, and since replacing him with an acceptable Palestinian leadership has little short-term hope, this new approach is likely to prevail, and to become the basis of American policy. It is not an unrealistic one. But any contribution which it does make to the lessening of the terrorist threat will only manifest itself in the longer term. In the interim, Tom Ridge, or his successor, will have plenty of work.