In this life, all of us make a choice between laughter and tears, depending on whether we see the human condition as a tragedy or a comedy. Unfortunately, the Iraq war presents a special problem. It is both.

Consider the democracy we are trying to plant there. Who said it isn't working? Tens of thousands of Shiites held a parade Monday to express their views on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. Old Saddam might have had a thing or two to say about that, but he's not around anymore, which is both good and bad -- good because he was an evil man, bad because his execution solved little or nothing.

Still, let freedom ring. Democracy is afoot, right?

Not so fast. According to the Associated Press, they marched about three miles between the holy cities of Kufa and Najaf to demand that U.S. forces leave the country. Oh, they also ripped American flags and stomped across a Stars and Stripes rug.

These are some of the people we came to liberate -- and apparently we did a swell job. More proof of the Iraqi people's gratitude might have come from Baghdad itself, but the authorities thought it prudent to ban vehicles on a work day, turning the Iraqi capital into something of a ghost town in an effort to forestall terrorists creating more ghosts, which they do with shocking regularity. You might laugh if you weren't crying.

To have a comedy, even a black comedy, the performance has to include clowns -- and, boy, do we have clowns. In the center ring, as the stage managers of the whole show, we have two hapless jesters who have made the pratfall into such a high art that some of their fondest fans in the audience don't even get the fact that they regularly fall flat on their faces.

Almost everything they say is a custard pie aimed squarely at themselves, although the pieces fall like shrapnel on those not so fortunate -- such as those bravely serving their country in Iraq.

The other day, the smarter clown, the one who had five exemptions from the war of his generation and who may really be in charge, was on the Rush Limbaugh show -- the Mecca of clowndom -- once again peddling the old line about al-Qaida being linked to Saddam, a notion now so threadbare a nudist could carry it at a summer picnic without compromising his nakedness.

But the real joke was that he spoke on the very day that the Pentagon declassified a report that said, as the Washington Post reported, Saddam's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaida before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Most of us knew this already, but this fellow doesn't. Funny isn't it? If you are not sobbing yet, look for more hilarity because for this vice presidential prankster and his straight-man president no joke is worth repeating like an old joke.

Ah, but some of you think I don't support the troops. Heck, I read my e-mail, some of you think I want to convert to Islam and I want the terrorists to win. Yes, I know, that's your little contribution to the comic opera.

Not to spoil your fun, but I don't want Osama bin Laden to be happy, as I assume he is, holed up in his secret location. Why wouldn't he be happy? First, he was allowed to escape from Afghanistan, which was always the right battlefield and should have remained our focus.

Next, we used 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, despite the fact that the terrorists on that terrible day were not Iraqis.

Now we are thoroughly bogged down, spending billions of dollars every year and losing too many brave Americans who have done all that was asked of them and more. We have not defined victory, except as some pie-in-the sky vision worthy of the tooth fairy. We have no exit strategy, unless it is to hang on until the Democrats can be blamed when futility becomes too plain to ignore even for a vice president.

Perhaps the surge will do some good for a while in tamping down violence but that is a long-term strategy. And where will the troops come from to sustain it? Not a draft, because that would mean asking a great sacrifice of the American people and that will never do. After all, there are elections to win.

Supporting the troops might mean insisting that they be deployed sensibly on ground not favorable to the enemy. Instead, it will mean insisting shamelessly that they go back to Iraq for three, four, five -- perhaps six or seven tours? -- and still fight in the midst of a civil war.

Osama bin Laden is laughing all right. More than four years into this tragi-comedy, he and his pals can be the only ones.