WASHINGTON – A Democratic Party supporter and financier, George Soros, yesterday offered up a new critique of President Bush’s war on terror, saying that it should not be a war at all.

Mr. Soros said to polite applause before a conference on terrorism policy here that the administration’s military response to the threat of Islamic terror increases the threat to America and “runs the risk of doing the same thing as the terrorists,” namely killing innocent civilians.

Because Mr. Soros last year spent $25 million trying to get Senator Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, elected, the financier’s thoughts on war and peace are of consequence to the minority party. In many ways, his views represent a departure among Democrats from the tough talk of Mr. Kerry, who last year pledged at various stops along the campaign trail to track down terrorists and kill them.

Mr. Soros’s opinions also matter in light of the low public approval ratings for the handling of the war in Iraq. Before Hurricane Katrina struck, national polls were showing that less than 40% of the American public approved of the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq.

Mr. Soros took out a full-page ad today in the Wall Street Journal to reprint the speech, which he titled “Reconsidering the War on Terror.” In some ways, the talk captured a criticism circulating among policy experts and critics of Mr. Bush as they worked to generate alternative policy on the war at yesterday’s conference, titled “Terrorism, Security, and America’s Purpose” and organized by a Washington-based think tank, the New America Foundation.

For example, the former director of transnational threats at the National Security Council, Roger Cressey, argued that Al Qaeda sympathizers were receiving training and gaining expertise in Iraq that could later be employed to deadly effect against the West. A former supreme allied commander of NATO and a Democratic 2004 presidential candidate, General Wesley Clark, argued that the military should not be the only tool used by America against Al Qaeda. “We are not going to win the war on terror by killing people abroad, even if they are terrorists,” he said. “When we kill people, we make enemies. When we kill the wrong person, it’s even worse.”

Mr. Soros went further than either General Clark or Mr. Cressey by suggesting a moral equivalency between America and its terrorist enemies.

While he was careful to say that he believed the American campaign in Afghanistan was necessary, he also said, “When we use military force, we risk playing into the hands of the terrorists. Terrorism is abhorrent because it kills innocent civilians for political goals. War, by its nature, claims innocent victims. By using military force, we run the risk of doing the same thing as the terrorists. In this respect, the war on terror is even worse than an ordinary war because terrorists try to remain invisible so the chances of hitting innocent victims is even greater.”

The address by Mr. Soros was laced with recommendations to end the “framing” of the current struggle in terms of a war, a direct reference to the work of a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley, George Lakoff, whose book on political framing has become popular among Democratic Party leaders.

In recent addresses, Mr. Bush has continued to use the phrase “war on terror” despites efforts by others in his administration to recast the conflict as a “struggle against violent extremism.”

Mr. Soros also said that America’s campaign against terror “must stay within the constraints of the law, even if the laws have to be modified to deal with the real terrorists.” While not a new theme for Democrats, the ideas raised by Mr. Soros could also call into question the deployment of Special Forces to paint targets for air strikes against terrorists and undercut the government’s authority to detain enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay.

Asked for a comment yesterday, a former speechwriter for Mr. Bush, David Frum, said Mr. Soros’s remarks and those by others at the conference could presage political catastrophe for the Democratic Party, comparing the comments to the party’s decision to endorse an anti-Vietnam war candidate, George McGovern, in 1972.

“The question has always been would the Democrats resist their impulse to go insane?” Mr. Frum said. “All they have to do to remain viable as a political party is not commit suicide as they did in 1972. They have been saying for four years, ‘We must not commit suicide as we did in 1972.’ With their eyes open and in full knowledge, they are having their McGovern moment.”

Mr. Soros and Mr. Bush seem to address that the spread of democracy is a long-term antidote for the scourge of Islamic terrorism. “We must foster democratic development in order to provide legitimate avenues for dealing with grievances that otherwise might be exploited by terrorist movements,” the financier said in his speech.