The U.N. likely will pass a new Iraq resolution Friday. Inspectors will pack their bags for Baghdad, and Saddam will waste no time in resuming his "cheat and retreat" game with them -- if he even accepts the resolution at all. Either way, it's a countdown to a showdown and the rest of the world will have to get serious about whether to back the Bad Cop against the Murderous Thug.

There's a lot to dislike about this. The Bush administration's Saddam obsession clearly carries some psychological baggage left over from the last movie. The Saddam-Osama connection is unproven. Control of Israel is a tug-of-war between two ultra-hawks, while Pakistan teeters on the edge of Islamist control, and the head of the American FBI warns of a resurgent al-Qaida. An Iraq attack looks like a sideshow distraction from a War on Terror getting longer and harder by the day.

But what if Bush is right?

What if it's a tragic mistake to let a vicious tyrant in the middle of the Middle East acquire weapons of mass destruction? What if the cost of pulling the world along on another Iraq war is less than the cost of doing nothing?

Even if it's a matter of a few years, not a few months, Iraq is undoubtedly racing to make a nuclear bomb. Well, so what? Other countries who have been America's enemies have held such weapons. But Iraq isn't the old Soviet Union, from whom, even in the depths of the Cold War, the U.S. could count on more or less conservative, self-interested decision-making. Saddam is no Khrushchev. He won't do something that will get himself killed, true, but he'll go as far as he can before he swerves. And that's sure to be farther than anyone else wants to go. According to Khidhir Hamza, one of Iraq's defecting nuclear scientists, soon after invading Kuwait Saddam ordered a crash program to build at least one nuclear weapon to fling at Israel if the coalition attacked him.

And he's not very good at understanding where that point is, when his own survival is at risk. Saddam's cabinet is a pack of sycophants as ignorant as he is about the outside world. As Kenneth Pollack recently noted, “For more than 30 years, Saddam's pattern has been to coldly miscalculate the odds, with disastrous results for Iraq and its neighbours.” Having an A-bomb up his sleeve is not likely to sharpen his gambling skill.

I sort of look at things in a neighborhood context. Maybe you don't like your beat cop. Maybe you even suspect he's on the take. But when a crack dealer moves into the house next door to you and your family, flashing handguns, is your fear of the cop a reason to do nothing? Maybe he's a rich crack dealer and you think the cop will steal his stuff. Is that a reason to do nothing? Maybe you can talk yourself out of it if you say, "Well there's a lot of crack dealers out there, and if I get the authorities to chase this one out, another will just move in and maybe shoot my family."

Many in the Arab world hate Saddam, but they hate America more. Think of the yearning to claim revenge, to deal out punishment, to feel validation. And Saddam personally may be a secularist, despised by Islamic clerics, but he knows how to play to the faithful. When you think of a nuclear-armed Iraq, think of the “Mother of all Battles” mosque, built outside Baghdad to celebrate Saddam's birthday in 2001. Each of the minarets is 43 meters high -- for the 43 days of the 1991 war in Kuwait -- and is designed to represent the Scud missiles fired at Israel. A copy of the Koran displayed inside is said to have been written entirely in Saddam's blood, which he is said to have donated to the tune of 24 liters over three years.

I don't understand the view that the U.S. pressure on Iraq is killing internationalism. The pressure on Iraq is coming via the United Nation. Bush didn't call the U.N. the League of Nations. He dared it to not be the League, by doing something about Iraq. The odd thing is, many of the ideologues who typically line up behind Bush want nothing more than for the U.N. to be an effete, 21st-century League of Nations. If anything, after the past weeks of U.S. negotiations with France, Russia, Syria, and China, the framework of international law is stronger. Tommorow's another day. But pressuring the U.N. to pressure Iraq to disarm seems to me the perfect sort of internationalist involvement that Bush père once stood as the heir to, before Reagan ate his brain.

But the Bush Administration is muddling its message about Iraq. Its aggressive bid to re-write the basic rights of Americans frightens many at home, and its first-strike military policy angers our old allies as well as neutral nations. The Iraq pressure from the White House looks like bullying, and at times it is. It will make us even more of a magnet for attacks than we already are.

America might as well accept that we are the new Rome. Illusions of our essential innocence ought to end. Being the world's sole hyperpower is a job that can be done well, or it can be done poorly. But it's too late to decide not to do it. We can be Republican Rome, with its self-conscious virtues, or imperial Rome. (Hint: which Roman, Cato or Nero, would have driven an SUV and Supersized his meals?)

We should, however, take this job on behalf of civilization and of human rights. And that will take a lot of change. We need to take a closer interest in being part of the world, and to willingly share the wealth we've hoarded. We also need to exercise a muscular commitment to the values we talk about. One small step toward that would be for the administration to admit that American leaders, including some still in power, backed the bad guy in Iraq for too long.

As for the American voices now gathering to protest the coming war, they have choices, too. They can claim a role in the new Rome, if they seek it. The just-ended election dashed their hope of turning aside the attack. But they can still take up the cause of the Iraqi people after it comes. Iraqis are in hell now, and it will only get worse after their government is wrecked again and stray U.S. bombs have found their neighborhoods and markets. Post-war Iraq may offer Americans the chance to prove their oft-boasted munificence, which was lacking in Afghanistan. Where was "Trick-or-Treat for Afghan Kids" this year?

It's not a pretty business, sweeping up after a war. But the world's a better place for every effort of those who do it. The choice is to see the coming conflict as a chance for liberation in Iraq, or to blindly oppose it just because it comes from George W. Bush, which runs the risk of seeming to back Saddam, just as many seemed to prefer the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, until I see more than "no war for oil" on the banners, and war opponents at least make an effort to convince me that Saddam is something we can ignore and it will go away, I'm going to stay clear of the protests.