President Bush leaves today for Africa just as the crisis in Liberia is coming to a head, but that in and of itself is no reason for him to commit American troops to the peacekeeping effort there, even if the capital of the country is named after President Monroe. Even if their flag is based on the Stars and Stripes. Even, for that matter, if both sides in the conflict want America to intervene. Even if our intervention is desired, nay, demanded by the thug who runs the country. Even if an American military expedition is endorsed by the big three of the left, Kofi Annan, President Chirac, and the former leader of Vermont, Governor Dean. Rather, Liberia presents an opportunity for Mr. Bush to clarify his own doctrine.

In Iraq, Mr. Bush established some precedents, starting first and foremost with a mandate from the American people. With all the second-guessing from the Democrats these days, we tend to forget that Mr. Bush gained several overwhelming votes in the Congress to use military force against Iraq. Two of them were specific authorizations of war. In the case of Iraq, there were a whole range of tests supporting an American action, from Iraq’s rebuff of 12 years of Security Council oversight, its past and possible future use of weapons of mass destruction, its coddling of confederates of Al Qaeda, and its financing of suicide bombings that have claimed American as well as Israeli lives and — as Mr. Bush himself mentioned — its threat to Israel.

In the case of Iraq, moreover, there was a legislative history of some depth, meaning the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which had long since established that regime change in Iraq was American policy as a matter of law. The act was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both houses of the Congress and signed by a Democratic president. The legislation included authority to invest in an already exist ing Iraqi democratic movement in exile, the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition that represented a broad faction of the Iraqi people themselves, as events since the war have confirmed. Indeed, it is hard to think of an American military expedition in the years since World War II that had more of a broad legal underpinning than the Battle of Iraq.

We cite this not to set down the Liberian situation as inadequately compelling. It is a country with a special history, founded as it was by Africans once held in bondage in America, though that history is complex — the former American slaves who established the country were backed by those who wanted Africans out of America, and the exodus to Liberia was opposed by American abolitionists. And, as our Dina Temple-Raston sketched in her reprise last month, more than 1 million persons have been displaced in the stop-start war that President Taylor can be held accountable for, and the troubles in Liberia are destabilizing neighboring countries. We have all too recently seen the scale of killing that can break out at Africa.

What we would like to see from Mr. Bush is the articulation of how Liberia fits into the doctrine that is emerging with his presidency. Mr. Bush himself has come reluctantly to nation building. He is being challenged on several fronts, from North Korea to Venezuela, from Paris to Iran. There are those who, even before the fiasco in the Security Council on the eve of the Battle of Iraq, were reluctant to see America enter any fray in harness with the United Nations. A number of serious Africa hands, such as Professor Ayittey, whose article we carry in the adjacent columns, are warning the president against a hasty intervention in favor of broader and more serious longterm solutions. It’s unlikely Mr. Bush is going to sort all this out while he’s in Africa trying to focus on important success stories. Better to wrestle on the Bush doctrine when he gets back home.