The most important aspect of the world crisis over Iraq at the moment is not the doings of the international weapons inspectors, nor of the American troops in the Gulf, nor of the U.N. Security Council. It is the interaction between one Iraqi — Ahmad Chalabi — and the American government.

Mr. Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, is the wisest analyst of the situation and one who has placed his life on the line for decades in the struggle to oust Saddam Hussein and replace him with a free, democratic government in Iraq. In an interview with The New York Sun for our April 16, 2002, launch, he urged that the American war plans against Saddam include “substantial and significant” Iraqi participation. “This is not going to be a war between Iraq and the United States. This is going to be a war of national liberation of Iraq by the Iraqi people against the regime in Iraq, with the United States providing assistance to the Iraqi people,” he said.

Mr. Chalabi’s advice has, unfortunately, been ignored by policymakers in Washington. As a result, President Bush has been fighting an uphill battle winning support for the war in America and overseas.

Mr. Bush’s arguments at the United Nations have focused mainly on the question of disarmament. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, which must be taken away, Mr. Bush says. But why must Iraq be disarmed and not Israel or America, which also have weapons of mass destruction? The answer, of course, is that Israel and America are free democracies and are therefore unlikely to use these weapons to initiate aggression. Without making that distinction, and without Iraqi participation in the liberation campaign, it looks to the world that America is fighting to keep Arabs from having weapons that the West has.

Mr. Chalabi raised the alarm again last week, with an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Telegraph warning that “the proposed U.S. occupation and military administration of Iraq is unworkable and unwise,” and asserting, “the liberation of our country and its reintegration into the world community is ultimately a task that we Iraqis must shoulder.”

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Mr. Chalabi’s point, politically, practically, and theoretically.

Politically, Americans don’t have much of a stomach for long, messy occupations or “nation-building.” America’s enemies will use an extended American stay in Iraq to depict us as an occupying foreign power with colonial ambitions. So on both counts, the sooner the responsibility is turned over to Iraqis, the better.

A Time/CNN poll recently asked respondents how convincing they found several reasons for a possible war with Iraq. “Saddam Hussein is a dictator who has killed many citizens of Iraq” was a reason that 65% found “very convincing” and 18% found “fairly convincing.” Only 41% found “very convincing” the idea that “Removing Saddam Hussein from power will help to eliminate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” And only 30% found “very convincing” the idea that “If Saddam Hussein is removed from power, the U.S. will be more secure.” We know that Mr. Bush doesn’t like to let polls dictate his policies, but in this case, the American public’s aversion to dictatorship dovetails with the right policy for Iraq — quickly promoting a democratic transition.

Practically, early Iraqi involvement increases the chances of a successful transi tion to democracy. As Mr. Chalabi put it, “The political legitimacy of any government in the future will be largely judged by how it emerged. If it emerges as a result of its participation in the liberation, then there will be an enormous credit to its legitimacy in the eyes of the people.”

This question of participation extends even to such seemingly mundane matters as who will distribute food, safe drinking water, and cellphones to newly liberated Iraqis. Participation in such matters by the free Iraqi resistance — namely, Mr. Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress — will increase the chances for a peaceful transition to democracy.

There are all sorts of matters that will present themselves in this transition that can easily be botched. Will newly free Iraq be a member of the Arab League? We’d hope not — that group is an agglomeration of tyrants that exists mainly to bash Israel. Will newly free Iraq be an officially Islamic state? We’d hope not — the country has a history of warmly accommodating Jews and Christians as well as Muslims of various sorts.

Again, the person with the soundest instincts on these matters is Mr. Chalabi. It’s certainly not the American State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency. And it’s certainly not the collection of old-fashioned anti-Israel types like former Iraqi foreign minister Adnan Pachachi and Ayad Allawi’s Baathist Iraqi National Accord, which the CIA and State have been involving in postwar plans.

There has been a lot of talk in Washington the past few years about correcting the mistake made in the Gulf War the last time around. That mistake, it is said, was leaving Saddam Hussein in place. Fair enough. But an equally grave error was not insisting on freedom and democratization in the countries — Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — that we went to war to protect. Kuwait has made limited progress. But Saudi Arabia is still a nest of official support for anti-American terrorism, as America learned as the identities of the September 11, 2001, hijackers emerged, and as Dore Gold documents in his new book, “Hatred’s Kingdom” (Regnery).

The deep, underlying theory of the war this time around is to create freedom and democracy in Iraq so that the conditions that spawned 9/11 terrorists in Egypt and Saudi Arabia don’t exist in Baghdad. If the project is successful in Iraq, it might spread to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and to the Palestinian Arabs. America will be safer in the end because of it.

But if America botches the transition to democracy and freedom this time around, as Mr. Chalabi is warning it might, it will set back the efforts to expand freedom to elsewhere in the Arab world. So there is a lot at stake here, both for the Arabs and for America, as well as for Israel, the other terrorist target.

At a White House briefing yesterday, an aide to Mr. Bush, Elliott Abrams, said,”The general principle is to try to establish Iraqi responsibility for Iraq as soon as possible.” A good principle — what remains is for the White House to follow through on it.

The best step forward would be for Mr. Bush immediately to recognize the Iraqi National Congress, led by Mr. Chalabi, as the provisional government of Iraq, and to respond to its request for assistance in the liberation. If France or other U.N. members want to question the American military intervention, Mr. Bush could refer them to Mr. Chalabi.