North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones (R) has become quite the media star. In recent days he’s appeared on CNN, every domestic broadcast network and even Al Jazeera, and all he had to do to attract all this attention was set himself up to be used by the left in calling on the president to set a “date certain” for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

He did it in a June 12 conversation with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, charging that the Bush administration misrepresented the facts going into Iraq at the behest of a cabal of neoconservatives and that, since it’s now clear they were wrong, we ought to set a date for the withdrawal of our troops from that troubled nation. Since then he’s backtracked, but by saying what he did he managed to ignite a political firestorm.

His is essentially a man-bites-dog story. It isn’t all that surprising that Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D-Mass.), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and their buddies would abandon Iraq or call for something as militarily risky as setting a date certain for getting out of a war they didn’t believe we should have gotten into in the first place, but for a man with Jones’s ideological and pro-defense credentials to join them is, well, news.

Jones is a decent man whom many rank among the most conservative members of the House. He is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a Jesse Helms protégé, and he represents a district that is home to numerous military bases and an estimated 60,000 veterans.

Initially a hawk on Iraq, Jones says he’s had second thoughts, but one still has to wonder just what’s gotten into him. It would be unfair to suggest that he’s grandstanding because by joining what one North Carolina newspaper calls the “cut and run crowd” he may be jeopardizing his seat … something Jones claims doesn’t bother him.

Although his constituents simply can’t imagine how the man they’ve elected and reelected since 1994 has managed to end up in the same camp with Kennedy and company, it must be acknowledged that many conservatives share Jones’s misgivings about the way our role in Iraq has morphed from liberator to policeman and nation-builder.

Many of his fellow conservatives saw going after Saddam Hussein as justifiable even if we ultimately failed to find the weapons of mass destruction everyone thought he was stockpiling. He was, after all, an enemy whose removal freed millions of his own people while changing the strategic map for the better.

But taking out Saddam and trying to turn Iraq into a little America are two very different things; nation-building, as George W. Bush himself pointed out back in 2000, is an incredibly risky undertaking. It’s a job for which our military is ill-suited and can easily lead to just the sort of mess that may be developing in Iraq today. It is a job best left to the locals, and Jones can hardly be faulted for hoping that we will turn it over to them just as soon as possible.

In addition, the reality of war seems to trouble Jones as much as it no doubt troubles those in his district who have personally experienced it. He obviously feels for those who have died or been maimed in Iraq and fears that there may be many more of them before it’s over. His almost desperate, compassionate desire to keep American death to a minimum comes through, but in listening to his heart Jones has ignored his head and could, as a result, lose his job.

The desire to turn things over to the new Iraqi government and bring our troops home as soon as it makes sense to do so is shared by many … including President Bush, his secretary of defense and most of his generals. Indeed, it is a desire endorsed by all but the aspiring imperialists among us.

Calling for what Jones called for, however, is something very different and potentially far more destructive to our interests than he imagines. Providing a guarantee to our enemies and those who would harm our friends that we intend to abandon them next week, next month or even next year whether they are able to handle their own defense or not could turn a possible success over there into a real failure.

This possibility doesn’t bother Jones’s new allies on the left who would no doubt welcome our humiliation in Iraq as they did in Vietnam, but it ought to worry the congressman. Perhaps he’s backtracking now because he has come to realize that he is being used by those who would applaud the collapse of a friendly government without giving a thought to the fact that such a collapse would render meaningless the loss of those Jones mourns.

Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, is a managing associate with Carmen Group, a D.C.-based governmental-affairs firm (www.carmengrouplobbying.com).