After Iraq, whither the American left? (State of the Nation).

AS SADDAM HUSSEIN'S STATUE went crashing to the ground on April 9, with it went the hopes of the American Left and the antiwar movement of re-creating their glory days of the 1960s. The American Left had been moribund in the 1950s and came to life in the 1960s on the anger of many, especially the young, against the protracted war in Vietnam. Since then, every time the Left has reached for a foreign policy issue, it has either evaporated or backfired on them. In the 1980s, Pres. Ronald Reagan threw the nuclear freeze movement off balance with his proposals for missile defense and deep cuts in Soviet-American arsenals. As the Cold War ended, the Left stood speechless when Reagan and Pres. George H.W. Bush signed arms controls treaties that cut nuclear weapons to levels the nuclear freeze movement hardly imagined. The Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, which the American Left romanticized, was repudiated by the Nicaraguans themselves in 1990s voting and has yet been able to win an election.

Prior to the 1991 Gulf War, the Left-liberals in Congress opposed giving George H.W. Bush the legal authority to rescue Kuwait. This effort was accompanied by the usual demonstrations outside the White House, complete with the cast of familiar Hollywood personalities. The rapid victory in the Persian Gulf and the liberation of Kuwait again had the Left gasping for air. After Sept. 11, many voices on the left considered the incident a consequence of American foreign policy arrogance rather than a manifestation of mindless religious fanaticism and global terrorism. When the military effort to remove Al Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan took a few weeks to get results, some on the Left questioned the operation.

For a short while, the war in Iraq seemed to give the Left a chance to build a "movement." The European and Arab streets were filled with protesters; the American academic community and the mainstream churches were in opposition; one major Democratic candidate for president, Howard Dean, was riding the issue for all he could; and in the early days of the war, the liberal media was talking about a quagmire. Many on the Left could see 1968 all over again with Dean as the next Robert Kennedy or Eugene McCarthy. All that ended when American troops entered Baghdad to Iraqi cheers. I am sure that it was not possible for the Left to feel the same exhilaration over this stunning victory as that of the vast majority of Americans.

When the American Left wrings its hands over the looting of the Baghdad Museum, the prospects of a fundamentalist Islamic state, or whatever dark clouds they can find in this American triumph, they are actually expressing, as writer Andrew Sullivan put it, "some kind of rage at reality." With the end of the Cold War and growth of the global free market, their socialist project is in ruins. They would like to cast the triumph of American power and capitalism as the makings of an empire. If there is an American Empire, who is in it? Canada? Mexico? The Western European states? None of them followed our lead in Iraq.

If Pres. George W. Bush can be accused of anything, it is for an excess of idealism, not about a ruthless drive for empire. In attempting to build democratic societies in the beleaguered states of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. is undertaking one of the most-idealistic projects in its history. Bush is going beyond the wildest ambitions of Presidents Woodrow Wilson or Franklin D. Roosevelt. These two apostles of liberal internationalism focused their rhetoric about democratization and self-determination on Europe with little regard for such distant lands. The American effort to establish a stable and functioning democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, rife with religious and tribal rivalries, will be far more difficult than what was required in Germany and Japan after World War II.

Pat Buchanan and other conservative isolationists can make a more-authentic critique of Bush. They can draw on their tradition of the pre-World War II America First movement. Nationalism and protectionism are their core values. Opposing a Wilsonian experiment in Iraq is something with which Buchanan and his movement can be most comfortable. They find this kind of liberal idealism unsettling.

What, though, is the Left's critique? Do they want America to bring socialism and a command economy to Iraq? That was exactly what Iraq's Baathist regime was all about, and it led to impoverishment and torture. The sorry truth for the Left is that the President has stolen the moral high ground in foreign policy. Former leftist Christopher Hitchens has dubbed radical Islam with its derogation of women, disdain for religious tolerance, and disregard of individual freedom as "Islamic fascism." How can the Left not join in a battle against it?

Radical Islam is not only reactionary, its tools of warfare--indiscriminate terror bombing deliberately targeted at civilians--are odious. By contrast, the American military effort in Iraq was completed with an extraordinary low number of civilian casualties. The new precision-guided weapons allow the military to focus on regime leaders, not the people.

While terrorists consciously target the innocent, the American military goes to great lengths to avoid harming them. The terror bombing in World War II and the euphemistically dubbed "carpet bombing" in Vietnam are things of the past. In fact, the U.S. no longer needs a full arsenal of nuclear weapons to ferret out its terrorist enemies and can lead the world in disposing of such weapons.

Where does this leave the American Left? Todd Gitlin, one of the most-intelligent voices on the Left, puts the matter quite bluntly: "The Left is left with its 'no.' A no has its occasions. But for a force that aims for power, it won't do." I wonder if anyone on those far outskirts of American politics will have an answer for Gitlin. I doubt it.

Robert J. Bresler, National Affairs Editor of USA Today, is visiting professor of government, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa.