The Democrats should have pointed out that America is not, in fact, at war -- at least not in the conventional meaning of the word. American troops are no longer engaged in regular combat, and American civilians have not been asked to make any sacrifices. After a brief initial war phase, the "war on terror" has imperceptibly and properly shifted into something more like an international police action, albeit one punctuated by ominous assassinations like the "Star Wars" robot-plane hit in Yemen. The Democrats should have made this clear and tried to lower the emotional tenor of the discussion about the most appropriate response to terrorism. After all, "Don't you know there's an international police action going on, mister?" isn't exactly the stuff to rally the troops.

The Democrats' complete failure to do this, or to engage Bush on any of the issues that came up after the 9/11 terror attacks, from the USA PATRIOT Act to Bush's green light to Ariel Sharon, cleared the way for Bush to make major political hay by demonizing Saddam. Bush's saber rattling about Iraq achieved two things at once: It helped restore a vague, politically useful sense of wartime paranoia and unease to the country, and it restored his image as a resolute war leader.

The fact is that once the Democrats rolled over, the Saddam-bogeyman card was a sure winner for Bush -- a fact surely not lost on his political strategists. Bush obviously won the votes of those who accepted his argument that Saddam posed an immediate and unacceptable threat. But, paradoxically, he also probably won over many of those who were confused and uncertain about whether invading Iraq was worth the risk. Bush's elevation of Saddam to the status of supreme world villain, and his irresponsible but politically clever assertion that Saddam and al-Qaida were linked, succeeded even in the minds of many doubters in turning Iraq into a kind of ominous miasma, indistinguishable from Osama's boys. The bottom line, in many minds, was simple: America is threatened by an out-of-focus mob of medieval ragheads, and we need the firm, even heavy, hand of a Republican to take care of them. The Republican qualities that many middle-of-the-road voters might find objectionable -- ruthlessness, impatience with niggling moral objections, selfishness -- look more attractive when a blurry horde of demented Arabs waving scimitars is riding in out of the desert.

Had the Democrats raised doubts about Bush's Iraq plans, more of these voters would have grasped that if Bush was wrong about the imminent threat posed by a secular dictator we lovingly embraced a few years ago, then he himself would be to blame if an invasion backfired. Democrats should have pointed out that an invasion of Iraq could have consequences more profound -- perhaps good, perhaps catastrophic -- than any U.S. military action since World War II. They should have pointed out that those consequences remain unforeseeable -- and that when consequences cannot be predicted with any degree of accuracy, when possible negative consequences could be catastrophic, and no compelling evidence exists of an imminent threat, prudence dictates nonintervention. That's why before 9/11, almost no one outside the small cabal of neoconservative zealots who are now driving America's Mideast policy seriously advocated a full-blown invasion of Iraq.

Yet the Democrats, implicitly accepting Bush's emotional but irrational claim that the 9/11 attacks changed the frame of reference not just for the Iraq issue but for everything, refused to debate the subject. The fact is, until the Democrats dare to challenge the Republican ownership of 9/11, Bush will keep playing the "We're at war" card -- and the Democrats will continue to face an uphill struggle.

Challenging Bush and Co.'s ownership of 9/11 doesn't mean turning quisling or becoming an "appeaser," to use a word promiscuously thrown around by blowhards on the right. It means quite the opposite: bringing a cold and dispassionate eye to the discussion of how best to defeat al-Qaida. Whether the struggle we're engaged in is called war, a police action or whatever, it will be most effectively prosecuted by cool heads. It's high time the Democrats get over their perennial fear of being attacked as unpatriotic -- the Republicans are going to smear them with that anyway, as Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia found out -- and got down to taking care of the nation's business.

The Democrats probably had no chance this time -- yet another reason to hate Osama and his hellish minions -- but they have ample time to get their act together. For Bush, looking ahead to 2004, Osama could be the gift that keeps on giving, politically speaking. If he can figure out a way to keep the public in a state of low-grade war fever for two more years, the GOP will continue to hold the political heights. It is one of the many tasks the Democrats face, as they pick up the pieces, to prevent him from doing that.

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