Letters: Lecturing Obama on foreign policy

Re “Obama’s foreign policy follies,” Opinion, Oct. 2

Pinning criticism of George W. Bush’s foreign policy coattails on the Obama donkey is a new one for Jonah Goldberg.

Iraq’s detente with Iran was predestined when Bush enabled the Shiite majority to rule. President Obama failed to openly support the Green Revolution in Iran after its presidential election in 2009 because that regime insisted the CIA was seeking another case of regime change, so Obama did not want to confirm the role of the CIA, as that would encourage a massacre of the Iranian dissidents. Obama keeps many of Bush’s Guantanamo Bay policies intact because they enjoy bipartisan support.

The Times Square bomber acted in retaliation for drone attacks under Bush in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but he was picked up much faster at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport than the 9/11 plotters were at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

Michael Haas

Los Angeles

Given the abysmal failure of the Iraq war by almost any measure, I find it appalling that the neoconservatives who got us to invade that country continue to suggest there would be any benefit to our continued presence there.

Inasmuch as the religious animosity between the Shiites and the Sunnis has existed for centuries, I wonder how long Goldberg and his neoconservative colleagues Fred and Kimberly Kagan (who Goldberg notes helped craft Bush’s “surge” policy) would have us remain in Iraq to keep a lid on it.

Peter Katz

Sherman Oaks

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