Letter: Nation-building on the backs of our soldiers

Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.

The only way I can back the Bush surge in military forces in Iraq is if President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pledge that their offspring will enlist in the military and volunteer for combat duty in Iraq.

We are admonished that if we fail to win in Iraq the sky will fall, and disaster will be our eventual fate. Similar rhetoric about a communist takeover domino effect of Southeast Asia was continually drummed during the Vietnam War.

It is ironic that Vietnam is now regarded as a potential peaceful trading partner with the United States. Vietnam is no closer to being a democracy today than Iraq.

Questionable intelligence, incompetent planning, other failed policies, rampant fraud, wasted money and material in Iraq have seen our national resources depleted by the trillions of dollars. We now have 3,000 dead soldiers with thousands of severely wounded and crippled individuals returning home.

We attempt to encourage a Jeffersonian type of democracy in Iraq in a feeble attempt at the nation-building of a society based on tribal and religious alliances that have existed for centuries. We cannot, and will not, win a perpetual civil war that has been a basic part of their cultural society since biblical times. It is a war that will have to be won by the Iraqi people themselves; currently, they don't seem all that willing to do much to resolve their own problems. A democratic society is the furthest thing from their aspirations.

Virgil A. Sestini, Las Vegas