The antiwar left has seized on Bush's accuracy problem, and that's a good thing. Using misinformation and propaganda to manipulate public opinion might be the coin of the corporate realm and political campaigns, but the behavior is profoundly undemocratic. So too with patronage, corruption, dishonesty and the deadly failures of postwar planning. It is essential to hold Bush and his allies accountable for their attacks on U.S. democracy and their failure to provide, as much as possible, for the security and well-being of the Iraqi people.

Even Bush allies have come to acknowledge that his postwar plan has been deeply flawed. Much of the public now accepts that Bush's case for war was based on exaggeration, distortion and deception. He provided no concrete evidence that Saddam was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. The administration claimed an alliance between Saddam and al-Qaida, but never came close to proving it. And yet, in his brief speech to the nation on Sept. 7, Bush insisted again that Iraq "is now the central front" in the global war on terrorism. With increasing frequency, even mainstream analysts are responding to such arguments with disbelief that verges on derision.

But among those who are liberals or leftists, rage is an insufficient response to the current state of affairs. Apart from all the incompetence and corruption evident in Bush's handling of the invasion, in spite of his dubious motives, something hugely important and inspiring is happening in Iraq: The 25 million people who live there today have a degree of freedom and opportunity that most of them have never known. And while there's much potential for the effort at liberation to collapse, there is also the potential that it may succeed.

Am I being naive? Possibly. Maybe the governing council and the Cabinet and the noble words of Hoshyar Zebari are symbols orchestrated by Washington to make the sale back home, even though they're unrelated to political reality as perceived by the average Iraqi. I continue to wonder why many Iraqis seem more angry at the U.S. than at Saddam or the saboteurs who target their power stations and oil pipelines. Certainly I know how tenuous conditions are in Iraq; perhaps a few more car bombs, timed and targeted with care, could plunge the whole country into chaos.

The difficulty, for many on the left, is that the war and Bush seem inseparable, so that if you cheer the liberation, you seem to be cheering Bush and Cheney. But that perspective, too, is a form of shortsightedness: If the war is not over in a matter of weeks, one thinks, then it is lost, or not worth fighting. When the car bombs blow, you say: "I told you so." The Iraqis are responsible for their own freedom, or maybe you think that the Arab world is not ready for freedom. These are the thoughts that can sometimes be implicit in a slogan like "bring the troops home."

There is another way of looking at things: Bush and Saddam, each in his own way, poses a profound threat to democracy, and so it's incumbent on us, even those who vehemently opposed the war, to oppose both of them while pressing to provide sufficient aid and support to make the liberation of Iraq a reality. One can oppose the enrichment of Halliburton, and yet still help to rebuild Iraq.

But there are no easy answers; it will take patience and commitment, and the costs will be significant. The history of places like Germany, Russia and Cambodia tells us that the damage done to the soul of Iraq in the years under Saddam will take a long time to heal. Many on the antiwar left are urgently calling on Bush to hand off the conflict to a multi-national United Nations force, but that may be a dangerous shortcut, or an outright illusion. On a recent edition of CNN's "NewsNight with Aaron Brown," former CIA analyst and Middle East specialist Reuel Marc Gerecht spelled out how troops from France and Russia, even Turkey and other largely Islamic nations, might reawaken old antagonisms among the Iraqis. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation, appeared on the same show to argue the antiwar point, but she had no answer for that. And even if other countries were to provide troops through the U.N., they could summon only a fraction of the 140,000 U.S. soldiers now stationed in the country.

Many of those troops are weary and uncertain, I know. Even as I lament the losses among them, I'm also thinking these days of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who rose up against Saddam in 1991, with the encouragement of the first President Bush, and how they were abandoned by the U.S.; today their bodies fill the mass graves that are being discovered throughout the country. And I think, too, of Iraqi poet and novelist Hamid al Mokhtar, who was profiled in a May 1 story by my colleague Phillip Robertson. Mokhtar was held for eight years and repeatedly tortured in Saddam's notorious Abu Ghraib prison; with Robertson, he returned to the prison for a grim tour of the cells and the death chambers where thousands were hanged. "We don't want revenge," the poet said, "we want the judgment of the law and not of the person."

At this moment, Hamid al Mokhtar confronts the left with a choice -- and not just the antiwar left, but pro-war progressives and those who remain morally conflicted: Either press to get the U.S. out of the region ASAP, or fully commit to the rebuilding of Iraq. Do the job quickly, or do the job right. We might've preferred a different choice, or different terms, but this is what history has given us.

The choice will play out starkly in the presidential campaign now underway. A majority of the American public realizes that Bush misrepresented the evidence for war and had no credible postwar plan, and that incompetence can be turned against him. To back a candidate simply because he opposed the war is a gesture, and gestures alone will not save the lives of American troops or restore our place in the world or preserve the Iraqis' freedom.

Liberals and leftists must argue that a Democratic president is needed to clean up the Republican mess. They should make the case that the country must elect someone who will reverse the Bush tax cuts, at least in partly if not entirely, and use some of the proceeds to fully secure Iraq and our troops there. Elect someone with the diplomatic connections and skill to restore constructive ties with Europe, Latin America and the United Nations. Elect someone who can both level with the American people and build trust with the people of Iraq.

Leaving Iraq prematurely is the worst message that the U.S. can send to the world; that would only confirm the cynicism and lack of commitment that others perceive in us, and it's not a message the left should endorse. Instead, we should suspend use of the slogan "Bring the Troops Home" before it catches fire. Better to rally behind a new line: "Do the Job Right."

And bring the troops home when the job is done.

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