Elections and mandate to govern

If in the UK Tony Blair wins the election and in the US George Bush wins his election,which did happen(unfortunately), is it then the case that they have a mandate to go ahead with whatever laws and policies they choose to implement?

I ask as this was part of an argument i was involved in recently. It was to do with terrorism lately etc. My contention was that the US goverment, with recent UK support, is the biggest cause of the problems we face today. Most recently the wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and the continuing conflict in Palestine. It seems to me that these are the biggest things causing problems between the Arab and Islamic parts of the world and the western world.

Anyway my friend was of the opinion that the suicide bombers and islamic extremists hate us and our freedoms. Which to an extent might be true, interpretation seems to be one BIG part of religion, but i am sure there are some people in the islamic world that look upon the west and think it is a den of sin and iniquity. However if the they didn't see the likes of the US and the UK influencing their own countries would they be motivated to lash out against them? I would reckon not. Either way i don't think incompatible believe systems are the problem. Getting back to Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and other US/UK involvement in the middle east and there are much more plausible reasons for resentment/anger/hate, combined with a sense of helplessness at the threatment from the hands of the worlds only superpower that might have inspired terrorist acts.

Which just to remind anyone reading i do not in anyway condone, it is just that i am of the opinion if you don't properly understand why something is happening you cannot effectively deal with it. If our reaction to terrorist attacks is based on misconceptions then are we not doomed to only make matters worse than they were before?

Anyway as this somewhat incoherant argument went here and there it was his assessment that irrespective of our personal opinions, they were duly elected governments and therefore serving the will of the people or alternately if the people that voted them in wern't clever enough to see what was coming then hell mend them. He also dismissed anti war marches as being utterly insignficant, if only 1 million people out of a nation of near 60m can be bothered to march against it then they are a pitiful minority that should be ignored.

This annoyed me greatly and the discussion didn't last much longer as we were diametricaly opposed and neither one nor the other was going to change their opinion. I was mostly frustrated at my own lack of ability to explain the thinking behind my viewpoint better but we were in a car and i couldn't really point to sources outside of what i could remember off the top of my head. Also the friend i was arguing is a politics student and a bit of a smug git on those kind of topics(i daresay this could be a pot calling kettle situation).

I think it's that he seemed to need to have an easy answer, or for want of a better phrase a soundbite answer for the problems with our own democratic regimes and their relations with the particularly at this moment the Islamic community worldwide.

In neither the UK or the US is the will of the people perfectly reflected in their governments and neither does the existence of suicide bombers make Islamic fundamentalist based terrorism something that can only be dealt with by more violence. While one day the solutions may appear simple in retrospect and i can certainly think of some ways to make a start just now, there are no easy answers to these problems and maybe we need to take a chance with a change in the paramaters of perceived wisdom and allowable discussion.

This would involve the biggest amount of backtracking and dropping of hypocrisy by the US government, who in reality are the biggest sponsor of state terrorism in my lifetime. There are example more aplenty if you are willing to look. It's not even hidden, just generally under reported to a scandelous degree. By the standards set by the Nuremburg trials Bush and Blair would be facing potential execution for their actions.

The following link is to my mind relavent to the discussion, although i'm getting hungry and impatient and am willing just to tack it on at the end rather than more smoothly intigrate it into the discussion. If someone would like to pay me for doing this kind of thing i'd be more than happy to take more time to add a veneer of professional slickness :-)