Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has gone on record as saying that a pending (non-binding) congressional resolution regarding a troop surge in Iraq is not "in the national" interest "emboldens" the enemy. That's close to saying it gives "aid and comfort to the enemy," which is one of the ways treason is usually defined. A reasonable onlooker might draw from this that according to Gates, Congress is never supposed to oppose the military actions of the executive branch. And of course if it never did, we'd have a military dictatorship in this country, rather than a democracy. However Secretary Gates clearly has a point: probably such a resolution would "embolden" the enemy. It seems pretty clear that anti-Vietnam War protests in the l960s "emboldened" the Vietcong. So we seem to have a problem here. What's a staunch believer in democracy to do?

Politics is increasingly the game of painting your enemy in the darkest possible terms while adopting a position at the other extreme. This is not only useless but poisonous; I've defended this view in my book "Why Liberals and Conservatives Clash." Our only hope of having a tenable common position is for each side to acknowledge what the other has going for it. So we should start by sketching what each extreme is going to be-that's probably what we'll hear from politicians, after all.

On the "hawk" side of things we'll hear that any squeak from inside the country that l00 percent of voters are not l00 percent behind the Commander-in-Chief is, in fact, very close to treason. The enemy has access to American newspapers, after all, and everybody nowadays goes to the Net. From this the hawks conclude that the whole country should be marching in military columns behind the Prez, saluting on cue and saying only, "Sir, yes SIR!" The fourth estate too, those reporters who always seem eager to print the bad news and never the good, need to curb their tongues or be curbed. Professors who teach to the young need to stay within rigid ideological boundaries; academic freedom is intrinsically dangerous, if for no reason that that it's a headache to the people it allows criticism of. We can't have the commanders with headaches, after all: they have a war to run.

Under these circumstances, the country is run like a military unit, with even civilians clearly aware of their subordinate status and eager to guess what the head honcho might want. If you don't do that, you're not a "team player" (which ends up meaning, don't make the commander feel good). Woe betide anyone who reads the Declaration of Independence, which asserts that governments are instituted to ensure fundamental rights of individuals, and have no intrinsic value aside from that. As the "doves" point out, everybody marching in goose-step in the civilian sphere as well as the military is an accurate description of militarized dictatorships.

Thus the doves, at their extreme, conclude that freedom of the press is absolute, that any militarization of civilian government is scary, that anyone who says, "Sir, yes SIR!" is a tool, and anybody who issues an order a fascist. So what, say the doves, if in fact the enemy is reading all about the failures in Iraq and reaches the (all too sensible) conclusion that the best thing to do is let time pass and wait for the Americans to leave. After all, history clearly shows that America wants its victories to have low body-count bills to pay: in the last sixty years, we've clearly lost the intestinal fortitude for protracted fights. Doves don't like to think about the fact that yes, this realization on the part of the enemy might well cause them to be willing to put on a push to wrap things up-just a few more suicide bombers (which means more coffins coming back to Dover) and that ought to do it. The troops really might pay the price.  To real hawks, doves look defeatist, weak, and yes, treasonous.

Each extreme has its points, but the fact is that neither one works completely. Thus, here as almost always, we should take the best points from each extreme, accepting neither one wholesale. We can't simultaneously maximize both, so we have to settle for as much of both as we can get under the circumstances.

What's undeniable in the hawks' position? It's true that the most militarily effective democracy is one that functions as if it were a military unit. This doesn't mean, as some theorists suggested for a time, that democracies are worse at waging war than tyrannies. There's clearly a morale price to pay in tyrannies, where the people involved are only doing it because they have to. And World War II made it clear that democracies, if sufficiently motivated, could in fact wage wars plenty effectively.

But it is true, as doves should admit, that the best military front involves asserting absolute confidence (even if you're scared inside), great amount of bluster (it might slow the enemy down), shouting down "defeatists" who suggest the possibility of failure (conceding it saps morale), and repeatedly asserting confidence in the nation's leader. And yes, it means that if everyone in America actually were into this Iraq business, it might (repeat: might) deter a few of the enemy.

Achieving the center position also means acknowledging that the hawks aren't out to lunch about this troop morale business. Bad press and low citizen interest in pursuing the fight does (repeat: does) affect troop morale. Almost all of the veterans of the Vietnam conflict write about how demoralizing it was to realize that the citizens weren't behind them. Why not smoke dope and blow your grenades to hear the explosion?

Yet achieving the center position means the hawks have to admit one of the doves' central points: that we throw the baby out with the bathwater if we give up too much for too long of the democracy we're supposed to be defending, here or abroad. It's one thing to voluntarily submit to temporary restrictions: democracies can do that-that's what World War II made clear. But it's another entirely to sit by while a strongman seizes power that he justifies as necessarily for military reasons-only don't ask what these are, as we'd have to kill you if we told you. It's having the tail wag the dog, moreover, for the hawks to say that the fault is with the citizens for not supporting a military foray of the Commander-in-Chief. It's his (as it's been until now) responsibility to get that support, explain to the people why they should accept temporary limited restrictions of the things our troops are fighting for.

At the same time, those demonstrating in the streets need to make it very clear that they are demonstrating against a political position, not against the troops, to minimize the hit to morale. (It still might not be zero.) Those who write in the public media must make clear that they understand the difficult position of the men and women who must in fact say, "Sir, yes SIR!" to the Commander-in-Chief. The rest of us don't, and shouldn't be bullied into thinking we should. We should exercise the right to say "no" precisely because those in uniform aren't allowed to.

And all of us should admit the valid points of each side. It's our only hope of maximizing both our military effectiveness and our democratic values. We won't get absolute effectiveness on either one alone, but we can get a cumulative maximum. That's what we're aiming at-anything else will turn us into something we don't want to be.