The war is wrong. The truth matters.

This is not an argument against pre-emptive war. But one requirement of a pre-emptive war is that there must be certainty of a threat. If the threat turns out to be nonexistent, then the war is illegitimate, and even if "successful" the results, too, will be illegitimate. There is very little worse for a nation than to find itself waging an illegitimate war. It is a no-win situation.

That is exactly the case in Iraq. The damage to America will continue. The mission now is to minimize that damage, and the strategy ought to be to force the Iraqis into stability by giving them a hard exit deadline.

We all want freedom and democracy everywhere in the world. But do Americans really want an endless series of wars that try -- probably unsuccessfully -- to force it upon other nations? Better to achieve that organically by diplomacy, trade and culture. Let our food and our cars and our science and our prosperity and freedom and rock and roll topple the Kremlins of the world.

Some Iraqis want democracy. Most don't. They want majority rule. There is a big difference. Most Iraqis want Sharia law. They want a revolutionary Islamic state. Sure, our little helpers mouth the words of sectarianism and plurality and respect for minorities, but the teeth in Iraq is in the radical Shiite clerics. The only reason Muqtada al Sadr is not in the streets fighting right now is because American soldiers are doing it for him.

The essence of democracy is the right to make your own mistakes. If left to resolve their own differences, the Iraqi factions might shed some additional blood (but probably less than with our continued presence), and then they might reach some stable resolution of issues and geography. Their own resolution! Even oil will not really divide them. Although the Shiites and the Kurds have most of the oil reserves, many of the pipelines to the refineries go through Sunni territory.

America is not safer because of this war. The source of Islamic violence over the last 35 years has been a reaction to real or imagined abuses by the West. This will just be another one and it will last no longer than the installation of the Shah of Iran. or the Soviet government in Kabul.

This war further and further isolates America in the world. And that will not stop until we leave Iraq. When we are confronted by real threats, from Iran and North Korea, for example, we find ourselves hobbled by our own lack of credibility and in some cases by outright hostility as a result of this reckless invasion. The fact is, we're scaring the piss out of most of the rest of the world, and that's not a good thing for us.

President Bush has said that if we leave before the "mission is accomplished" then al Qaida and other Islamic terrorists will rush in and use Iraq for sanctuary and a staging and training area for more attacks on America and our allies. That is already happening and it is happening because of Iraq. It will continue to happen. The only thing that can stop that is the Iraqis themselves. But which Iraqis? Will Islamic theocrats declare war on Islamist terrorists? Dream on. The hope of a secular Iraq died in the shock and awe campaign.

And finally there is the little problem of defining success. What, specifically, does "success" mean? Elections without fraud? An end to the violent persecution of Iraq's tiny Christian minority? Equal rights for women? A separation of church and state? Recognition of Israel and a repudiation of violence to achieve an independent Palestinian state? If ultimately, the mission of reforming Iraq will be concluded with an arbitrary declaration of victory, then let's get it over with.

We should not be intimidated by the "cut and run" name calling. In Vietnam, our government dragged out the war for years after it was clearly a mistake. The result was a humiliating exit, having been defeated by the North Vietnam nationalists. It was humiliating. But what difference has it made? Vietnam evolved, via small scale capitalism and other trends into a pretty stable country and even with cordiality towards the United States. Did the humiliation weaken the power of the United States? Not really. If we had had the courage to leave five years earlier, we could have earned respect in the world as a nation with the ability to admit a mistake and save a few hundred thousand lives. This the position the American people understand because the truth of it is so painfully obvious and how it distinguishes our candidates from the Republicans' couldn't be more clear.