Can any good come out of this?

In early August, General John Abizaid, the commander of the US Central Command and the most knowledgeable senior military official about Iraq, expressed his fears to a Senate Committee that conditions in Iraq are the very next thing to a “civil war.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went further one day later when he wrote that our armed forces in Iraq “are babysitting a civil war.” Can any good come of continued US presence in such a conflict? Isn’t it time to consider letting the Sunnis and Shiites settle their centuries-old animosity without our forces caught in the middle?

I also refer you to US President John Quincy Adams, who stated: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” And Calvin Coolidge, our nation’s 30th chief executive, famously summarized: “Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.”

I agree.

Marilyn V. Hilborn

Boulder City, NV