It is hard to think of a more direct threat against the legislative process in America than the warning issued Monday at Beirut. According to a dispatch of Reuters, Lebanon’s public prosecutor vowed to investigate what he called “unsettling” comments made by Lebanese opposition figures backing a draft law called the Syria Accountability Act of 2002, which is under consideration at Washington. The bill, whose original sponsors include Eliot Engle of New York and which has broad bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate, is designed “to halt Syrian support for terrorism, end its occupation of Lebanon, stop its development of weapons of mass destruction, cease its illegal importation of Iraqi oil, and by so doing hold Syria accountable for the serious international security problems it has caused in the Middle East, and for other purposes.”

One of the supporters of the bill is an organization called the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon. Its president, Ziad Abdelnour, is an American citizen and New York businessman who dreams of restoring a real democracy to Lebanon. Such a democracy could, like the Iraqi democracy to which America is already committed by the Iraq Liberation Act, serve as a model and an inspiration to democratic movements throughout the Middle East. It is clear that the Syria Accountability Act is starting to worry the regime at Damascus and its stooges in Beirut, particularly after a number of influential Maronite Christian leaders attended a summit meeting at California in June, where some of the delegates called for American sanctions against Syria. What the Lebanese prosecutor’s comments amount to is a threat against those, many of them Americans, who are helping the Congress formulate legislation to deal with a terrorist-sponsoring nation.

More broadly what we have been seeing recently are early indications of just how powerful the idea of Arab democracy really is. There are those who belittle this idea, arguing that no democratic tradition exists in the Arab world. They overlook the example of Iraq, where a democracy existed in the interwar years of the 20th Century and where Congress has provided funding for the free government in exile known as the Iraqi National Congress. President Bush stunned the Middle East by making the establishment of a democracy to replace the regime of Yasser Arafat, the centerpiece of his policy with respect to the Palestinian Arabs. Lebanon, where there is also an impassioned history of democracy, is another example. The warning from the public prosecutor in Beirut is a wake-up call to Congress that when it comes to American support for the democratic movements in exile, time is of the essence.