Naive view of Bush

Re “The dissident choice,” Opinion, Nov. 24

Natan Sharansky says that George W. Bush “routinely met with democratic dissidents in the Oval Office,” “to press regimes to become more open and free,” but “was not effective enough to advance this goal.”

With all that Sharansky endured, I am shocked by his naivete.

Bush has stated that democracy is his foreign policy. But words are cheap, and the main action he took was to help his friends in big oil, and the military-industrial complex, by invading Iraq to secure its oil reserves.

How many other countries without resources, who seek democracy, did he invade and occupy?

Bush’s father has to be respected for his honesty. He saved our oil interests in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, but he had the intelligence not to attempt to occupy and impose an impossible “democracy” on Iraq.

Martin J. Weisman

Westlake Village