Congress passed a use-of-force resolution last week aimed at giving the President the tools and the political capital to force Iraq to abandon its drive to develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction. It was the right thing to do for the following reasons:

• Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious and continuing threat to world and Middle Eastern peace, and to U.S. national security interests.
• His serial defiance of the agreement that ended the Gulf War, and of U.N. resolutions aimed at enforcing it, is a serious and continuing threat to the world community.
• His efforts to develop and deploy chemical, biological and nuclear weapons pose an especially grave and growing threat.
• The United States should act through the United Nations to enforce its resolutions and disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, preferably through peaceful means such as inspections but if necessary by force.
• The credible threat of military action is essential to any peaceful resolution of the conflict with Iraq.
• If the U.N. fails to take action to enforce its own resolutions due to a Security Council veto (as occurred during the Kosovo crisis), the United States should still act, with as many allies as possible, to disarm Iraq.

Members of the New Democrat Coalition supported the use-of-force resolution by a margin of 42-32 in the House and 17-3 in the Senate, supplying a majority of Democratic "aye" votes in both chambers.

Outside the NDC, Democrats voted against the resolution by a margin of 101-39 in the House and 20-10 in the Senate. A relatively small number did so because they oppose a military confrontation with Iraq under any circumstances. But many others voted "no" simply because they do not trust the Bush Administration to successfully pursue the complex strategy of keeping the peace by threatening war as a last resort. Still others are simply beside themselves with anger at the timing of the vote and the obvious efforts of Republicans to exploit the Iraq issue for political advantage on the eve of a close midterm election.

We sympathize with those Democrats who express concerns about the Administration's reckless disdain for multilateral cooperation and world opinion in the past, and its motives for focusing on Iraq at this particular moment. We share many of these concerns, and are increasingly convinced that this President is leading the country in the wrong direction on many issues, especially the deteriorating national economy.

But like it or not, George W. Bush is the only President we have, and he needs both the support and the legal authority to bring Saddam Hussein to heel. And for the foreseeable future, Democrats need to get used to the post-9/11 reality that war and rumors of war will never be completely off the nation's political radar screen.

So we praise the Democrats who put aside their own misgivings about George W. Bush and did the right thing for the country, just as they would have done had President Bill Clinton asked for similar authority. As Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said before casting her own "aye" vote on the resolution: "A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him: use these powers wisely and as a last resort."