The political left is in trouble.

It's been going down for decades, but since 9/11 it's fallen so low that lefties embrace any lie that offers comfort. One of their favorite fantasies is that deposing Saddam diverted resources from the War on Terror.

First of all, the War on Terror is global. It can't be confined to Afghanistan or to any other bad neighborhood. You can't put police tape around a failed civilization. Our response must be comprehensive, our vigilance constant.

Destroying Saddam's regime removed a government based on domestic and regional terror. Our triumph broke the fateful stasis in the Middle East, extending the possibility of democracy to 25 million people. The Iraqis may ultimately fail themselves, but even an imperfect success would prove that tyranny isn't inevitable in the Middle East.

Giving Muslim populations hope won't eliminate terrorism in the short term. But it could reduce it dramatically in the long term.

Yet leftists reject the argument for broad efforts to influence deep causes - even though it used to be their own demand. They're far more interested in getting President Bush than in getting Osama. Their interests lie in sound bites, not in strategy.

All right. Set strategy aside. Step down to the practical level. To listen to the primary-campaign cries deploring the mythical shift of assets from the War on Terror to the liberation of Iraq, you'd think our government can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

I have one simple question for the critics: Exactly which vital assets were diverted to Iraq from our efforts to continue al Qaeda's destruction?

No generalities allowed. No waffling. Be specific.

Gen. Wesley Clark, at least, should be able to tell us (to be fair, his only experience on the left comes from driving a car in England). Can't do it, huh?

The critics insist that our government's attention was forced away from the urgent pursuit of terrorists. It simply isn't true. The instruments of power used to overthrow Saddam were fundamentally different from those required by the cat-and-mouse game that continues on the Afghan-Pakistani border - or in the countless rat-holes around the world where our efforts don't show up on 24/7.

What did those on the left want us to do in Afghanistan, anyway? If you go back to the autumn of 2001, you'll find the answer is "Nothing." Have they had a change of heart? Would they like to deploy a half-dozen Army divisions to Kandahar?

The fact is that Afghanistan and Iraq are fundamentally different and require nearly-opposite approaches. Rural Afghans truly are warriors and their xenophobia runs deeper than their petty selfishness. Iraqis (except for the Kurds) have no warrior tradition. Born collaborators, they pursue personal, family and clan self-interest.

"Resistance" to our occupation in Iraq has been petty in historical terms, the actions of the bitter few, not the grasping many. In Afghanistan, however, too heavy a hand would embitter the population and wreck any chance of building even a semi-functional state.

The War on Terror in Afghanistan is like a basketball game. You don't want a hundred players crowding the court. It's about strategy and agility, skill and the will to win, not raw numbers.

Occupations never lasted in Afghanistan. But artful policy and limited campaigns did the trick, from the age of the khans down to the age of Kipling.

Have we done everything perfectly in Afghanistan? Or in Iraq, for that matter? Of course not. Warfare never lacks some ragged edges. The arrows in the history books are tidy and clear, but battlefields are not. The enemy doesn't behave according to your script. Even the best commanders err occasionally. But our military successes, in both theaters of operation, have been remarkable by any standard.

The other dishonest objection is that key intelligence resources were diverted from the War on Terror to the "unnecessary" toppling of Saddam.

It simply isn't true. No experts on al Qaeda, or on Afghanistan or Pakistan, were diverted to count Saddam's artillery pieces. Lower-skilled analysts are shifted frequently, even when there isn't a crisis. But the artisans of intelligence stay focused.

We do have too few linguists. But that's an inherited, bipartisan problem. And we didn't transfer Urdu, Tajik or Pushtoon speakers from the hunt for Osama to the search for Saddam. It's simply not the way the system works.

But the critics don't want to know how the system works. Nor do they lend their own talents to improve it. They simply want to complain while others die.

Consider the hundreds of bona fide terrorists we've captured or killed in Iraq, including high-ranking members of al Qaeda. Don't they count?

By what measure is the War on Terror failing or slowing? Suicide bombers can grab the tactical initiative now and then - no one has a solution to that challenge. But we have seized and retained the strategic initiative, the one that really counts.

If anyone really believes that our global efforts against terrorism, from Tikrit to Tijuana, are ineffective, just ask Osama.

If you can track him down.

He's harder to find than dignity on a cable channel. Not because we've failed, but because we've kept him on the run for over two years. He once controlled an empire of terror. Now Osama lives in terror himself. He's even afraid of video cameras.

Meanwhile, not one of our domestic critics has offered us a detailed plan for a more effective pursuit of America's enemies. Because none of them has a plan. It's all talk.

If speeches alone solved problems, Castro and Khadafy would rule the world.

Copyright: The NY Post

Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."