Whatever else you may think about President Bush's policy toward Iraq, you can't accuse him of pursuing it with a foolish consistency.

Throughout August, the White House insisted it did not need Congressional or United Nations backing to launch an attack on Iraq. Then, as Congress returned to work after Labor Day, President Bush completely reversed himself, pledging to put the issue to a vote this fall and, for good measure, take his case to the UN General Assembly.

Thus did the summer's pugnacious Texas Ranger morph into the fall's sober global statesman. It was yet another instance of this administration's oscillation between spasms of unilateral assertion and international cooperation.

The President's pirouette came not a moment too soon, as the administration's failure to articulate the rationale for regime change in Iraq was threatening to make a thorough mess of U.S. policy toward Mesopotamia.

The administration's secretive summer planning to topple Saddam Hussein had alarmed not only our more timorous European allies, but even such hard-boiled Republican realpolitikers as former Secretaries of State James Baker and Henry Kissinger.

Much of this angst could easily have been avoided. It was inevitable that President Bush, like his father, would seek Congressional backing for a major armed attack on Iraq. Bush will need a show of unity at home to convince the world the United States is serious about taking Saddam down. And it's plainly in his interest to share with Congress the considerable political risks involved in overthrowing a foreign regime, especially if things go wrong.

The White House also bungled the job of mobilizing international support. By casting the issue in stark, good-versus-evil terms, presenting his decision to attack Iraq as a fait accompli, and conveying the impression that he doesn't give a hoot what the rest of the world thinks about it, Bush squandered chances to make common cause with friendly nations that share our values and left staunch allies like Britain's Tony Blair in the lurch. As a result, the burden of proof shifted from Saddam and his apologists to the United States. Conversation abroad focused not Saddam's perfidy, but on whether the United States is an out-of-control hyperpower answerable only to itself.

Such canards -- which Blair bravely labeled "straightforward anti-Americanism" -- demand a response not only from President Bush but from Democrats. As authentic heirs to America's internationalist tradition, they can remind the world that it is not U.S. power but Saddam's outlaw regime that poses an unavoidable challenge to the basic values that Europe and America share and that world bodies like the United Nations were created to defend.

In opposing regime change in Iraq, many Europeans profess a punctilious regard for international law. Instead of dismissing such concerns out of hand, Democrats should demand robust enforcement of the international laws Iraq has violated. After all, Saddam has defied U.N. resolutions requiring him to end his quest for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and for four years running has refused to allow inspectors in Iraq.

The Germans and French insist that only the United Nations can legitimate an armed attempt to depose the Iraqi dictator. Fine: Let's take our case to the Security Council. After all, Saddam has invaded two neighboring countries (Iran and Kuwait) and launched missile attacks on two others (Israel and Saudi Arabia), at the cost of more than a million lives. He has twice used chemical weapons against his enemies at home and abroad. He is the world's No. 1 violator of human rights, ordering a vicious ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kurds in the north of Iraq and savagely repressing the Shia majority in the South. He is a prime sponsor and subsidizer of terrorism, offering refuge to psychopaths like the late Abu Nidal and paying a $25,000 bounty to every Palestinian family that offers up a "martyr" to the holy cause of murdering Israelis. In short, he embodies precisely the kind of aggression the United Nations was founded to confront. And if stopping predatory regimes like Iraq's is not a legitimate task for collective security, what is?

Unlike the Bush administration, Democrats can frame the case against Saddam in terms of the common values and interests that unite the United States, Europe, and civilized nations everywhere, and our mutual responsibility to defend human rights and democracy. Instead of an argument about American arrogance and supposed hegemonic ambitions, we should be talking about our shared obligation to bring to justice someone who has committed crimes against humanity.

Even if we fail in building a broader coalition or winning U.N. support for Saddam's ouster, America will have shown what Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence called "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind" -- and made it amply clear who the real rogue state is.

Will Marshall is president of the Progressive Policy Institute.