The wrong call on Iraq

Re “Haunted by Hussein, humbled by events,” Opinion, April 17

We all didn’t believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; it was mostly those who wanted a reason to start a war that believed it. Nevertheless, we invaded a country, and its citizens are not better off than they were before. I have to give Robert D. Kaplan credit, though, for admitting that one of the justifications for invading Iraq was because maintaining the “no-fly” zone was expensive. Did Kaplan really think a war and the subsequent occupation would cost less?

Our leaders screwed up big time, and they need to find a new line of work, from the people at the White House to the Pentagon and Congress. Kaplan is delusional if he thinks that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney are faultless in this debacle because they are “strong personalities.” Why should they get to keep making mistakes?

KEN GOLDSHOLL

Santa Barbara

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Kaplan maintains that knowing a totalitarian regime “intimately” is more important than knowing it “abstractly” and that his “firsthand knowledge” of Iraq in the 1980s therefore led him to support President Bush and the invasion of Iraq.

Here’s the question he didn’t ask: Can firsthand knowledge two decades old still be firsthand knowledge? Kaplan’s admission of being “humbled by events” in Iraq provides the answer.

THOMAS F. ANDREWS

Altadena