Letter: Our leaders could learn much from past

Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2005 | 9 a.m.

The dumbest bit of armchair psychology to come out of the Iraq disaster (and this is saying a lot) came near the beginning of the war, from Bush's brilliant military adviser. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he always liked to put himself in the other fellow's shoes and if he were an Iraqi, he would welcome U.S. troops with open arms for helping get rid of Saddam Hussein.

If he had studied the Vietnam War he would have noticed that patriotic people do not especially like to have foreign troops invade their country and tell them how to run it. Sure, Iraqis wanted to get rid of Saddam, but he was their sadistic dictator and it was their business to get rid of him, not the United States'.

Consequently, patriotic Iraqis joined the guerillas in droves, fighting the invaders or hiding their warring friends. Those who fraternized with the foreign-speaking outsiders were soon looked on as traitors or at least not good Iraqis.

Rummy also might have learned something by reading about the Russians' defense of Stalingrad. Russians had a dictator fully as evil as Saddam, but they fought Germans in the rubble of their city to a standstill, then helped drive them out of their country.

Rummy and Bush also might have noted that former enemies such as the Japanese, Germans, Russians and Vietnamese can become our friends if we show patience, offer help and apply a little gentle, nonbelligerent economic and moral pressure.

History has lessons to teach. But the Bush administration doesn't believe in reading. They apparently don't even study the Christian Bible they claim to follow.

The people on Earth have to learn to live together, one way or another, or blow the planet up in one apocalyptic cataclysm, right out of the nightmarish forecasts in the book of Revelation.

Paul Gwin

Las Vegas