By Doug Bandow

The presidential election is months away and the battle lines already seem formed. The Democratic nominee, whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, will push economic and social issues. The presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, will emphasize national security.

The edge should go to the Democrats, since a majority of people favors the Democratic Party on virtually every issue. Yet every poll shows John McCain to be competitive with both Democrats in November.

Much of his support is based on his experience, even though he admits that he's paid little attention to economics and he has dangerously extreme views on foreign policy. Indeed, a majority of Americans believe the Iraq war, avidly supported by McCain, was a mistake.

The Democrats might hope that economic bad news will tip the election their way, but McCain isn't likely to do them the favor of fighting where they feel strongest.

He's already proved willing to shamelessly demagogue national security, making the most absurd claims to back his support for America in Iraq today, tomorrow, and for years (and perhaps even centuries) to come.

For instance, McCain mocked Obama for saying that he would return to Iraq ``if al-Qaida was forming a base in Iraq.'' Al-Qaida is already there, said McCain, and if we left ``They'd be taking a country."

Naturally, said the man who jokes about bombing Iran and writes about attacking North Korea, ``I will not surrender to al-Qaida.''

Of course, as Obama pointed out in response, al-Qaida moved into Iraq only after the Bush administration, with McCain's avid backing, did al-Qaida the favor of eliminating the established regime.

And al-Qaida has no chance of winning a civil war, opposed as it is by the Sunni tribes and Shia majority.

But why let the facts get in the way of another neoconservative fantasy?

Since McCain is determined to make Iraq his signature issue, Democrats must fight back. And they should take the offensive. After all, the American people agree with them that the war was an awful, costly mistake.

McCain has abundant personal courage and political determination, but they cannot disguise his poor strategic judgment and personal temperament.

Americans should not give control of the most powerful military ever created to someone who possesses an explosive temper and got the most important foreign policy issue of our time wrong.

McCain's defeat is critical for another reason. The question is not, would he initiate another conflict? The right question is, how many conflicts would he initiate? He has spoken of ``many wars'' in the future, and they, like Iraq, almost certainly would be unnecessary wars of choice.

Even if the American people based their votes on domestic rather than international issues, a McCain victory would enable him to carry out his foreign policy agenda virtually without constraint.

Congresses, like the present one, routinely wilt when confronting presidents, even when the latter violate the Constitution

Moreover, a McCain triumph at the polls would be proclaimed, by McCain and the neoconservative activists who brought us the Iraq disaster, as an affirmation of the Bush policy of counterproductive preventive war.

President George W. Bush says as much. He told the Republican Governors Association that the voters will elect a Republican president who will continue the Iraq war.

But it isn't enough to just criticize the Iraq policy. Unfortunately, both Clinton and Obama agree with McCain on the virtue of Washington engaging in coercive social engineering around the world.

They only differ on the prudence of the Iraq war. That judgment, though laudable, is insufficient to protect against likely lobbying for an attack on Iran, Syria, and North Korea, intervention in Darfur, confrontation with China and Russia, and more.

The U.S. needs a genuine debate over America's routine, but routinely flawed, intervention in other lands. At least Obama, if he is the Democratic nominee, can credibly criticize the Iraqi imbroglio.

Hopefully Democratic congressional candidates ― joined, perhaps, by a few Republicans in the Ron Paul mold ― will go further and advocate a return to a more restrained foreign policy.

And the American people need to ensure that an even more aggressive administration does not conscript their sons and daughters for even more bloody adventures abroad.

Domestic issues are important, but the U.S. government's foolish determination to insert itself in the middle of endless controversies around the globe is what brought the horror of 9/11 upon the American homeland.

Doing more of the same creates the risk of suffering the far greater horror of nuclear terrorism at home. In November the American people must insist that their government adopt the humble approach that candidate Bush spoke of in his campaign eight long years ago.

Doug Bandow is the Robert A. Taft fellow at the American Conservative Alliance. A former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of ``Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire'' (Xulon Press). He can be reached at ChessSet@aol.com.