The White House Web site describes what transpired yesterday between President Bush and Secretary-General Annan as a “photo opportunity.” Let’s hope that’s all it was, because if Mr. Bush meant it when he said the United Nations has a “vital role”to play in Iraq, both he and the Iraqis are in a lot more trouble than we’d previously imagined. “We are going to go there to help the Iraqis,” Mr. Annan said yesterday. One could not help but think of President Reagan’s famous wisecrack,”The nine most terrifying words in the English language are,’I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'”

The U.N. was most recently responsible for administering the “oil-for-food” program under which Saddam regime perpetuated itself. It’s not as if the Iraqis themselves don’t grasp the meaning. The Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada on January 25 published an article reporting that “Since the deposed regime endorsed the ‘Memorandum of Understanding,’ also known as ‘oil for food,’ it turned it into a despicable political and commercial game, and used it to finance its clandestine acquisitions of arms, expensive construction materials for the presidential palaces and mosques, and frivolous luxury items. It turned the oil sales agreements into the greatest bribery operation in history, buying souls and pens, and squandering the nation’s resources.” (Translation by Memri)

Now Saddam is captured — thanks to Americans and Iraqis, not the United Nations, which left postwar Iraq the moment it came under fire there and which couldn’t muster support for a resolution endorsing outright the use of force to oust the dictator. And now that the dictator is gone, the United Nations wants a piece of the Iraqi action again. Time to watch out. The United Nations Security Council last year included Syria, the regime that colluded with Saddam in smuggling oil and perhaps also weapons of mass destruction. This year it includes nuclear proliferator Pakistan. Communist China is a permanent member.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that he discussed with Mr. Annan ways to make Iraq “an example of democracy in the Middle East.” The notion that an organization whose leadership includes Pakistan and Red China is going to help create an example of democracy anywhere strains credulity. If Mr. Annan and the U.N. are so anxious to help promote democracy, why don’t they take on Syria and China, and let America and the Iraqis handle Iraq?

So what is Mr. Bush thinking? Clearly, one possibility is that he sees some shortterm political upside to photo opportunities with the secretary general. There’s a certain internal logic to this. The Democrats have been attacking the president for what they call a unilateral foreign policy that insufficiently involves the United Nations. Getting the U.N. involved in Iraq might blunt that line of attack. Furthermore, the Iraq situation is messy. Americans are getting killed there, and the outcome in terms of the emerging Iraqi state is unclear. So, the argument goes, why not dump the whole problem on the United Nations and let them try to deal with it?

But as a political matter, we doubt that Mr. Annan is really as popular with the American public as the Democratic presidential candidates seem to believe. And on the substance, the logic breaks down the minute one examines the reason that America went into Iraq in the first place. Mr. Bush explained it on February 26, 2003: “The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder.”

If spreading democracy is genuinely a matter of self-defense for America, then delegating the task in the key beachhead to a weak and ineffective United Nations, in which undemocratic states like Pakistan and Communist China hold sway, is counterproductive. While photo opportunities with Mr. Annan might offer Mr. Bush a temporary political advantage, imagine the hay the Democrats could make out of another terrorist attack on American soil. That’s the risk if the American project to spread freedom and democracy to the Middle East fails.