Goldberg ignores historical record

Re “What wars would the Dems wage?” Opinion, Jan. 25

It is clear that Jonah Goldberg was not in the Korean War, as I was, or he would never have decried President Eisenhower’s successful termination of that bloody conflict, which indeed began under a Democratic president and was ended by a Republican.

That war was a hot spot in the Cold War, and we protected noncommunist South Korea from the Chinese army and Russia, which together supported North Korea; it is hardly Eisenhower’s fault that North Korea is now poor and has nuclear weapons.

That a Democratic president (Harry Truman) indeed fought a war there in our self-interest refutes Goldberg’s point, and that a Republican president ended the war when it became a stalemate makes nonsense of his piece.

DAVID COVELL

Altadena

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Goldberg is really a guy who’s run out of things to say. And no wonder: The people whose water he wants to carry have handed him an empty bucket and the river’s run dry. Speculating about what might happen if we withdraw from Iraq is much like speculating about anything else: Goldberg doesn’t know; I don’t know; nobody knows.

What we do know is that when you’re in a hole, it’s best to stop digging, yet the Bush administration wants to do just the opposite, and poor Goldberg, who apparently is determined to try to make sense of what doesn’t make sense, desperately fans the flames of fear by speculating senselessly about things no one knows.

Jonah, it’s time to write that novel you’ve always wanted to write. Or maybe do some traveling.

JIM HOUGHTON

Encino

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Goldberg ignores the fact that millions of Koreans were killed in the war. He forgets that there was no civil war in Iraq before we invaded that country. Goldberg’s take on history is a childish attempt to blame war opponents for the mess he helped create.

CHRISTIAN HAESEMEYER

Champaign, Ill.