We need to listen to the military experts

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is a West Point graduate, retired lieutenant colonel, and is a combat veteran who served in the Army from the Vietnam War to the first Gulf War. Last week he was informed that his only son, a first lieutenant in the Army, had been killed in Iraq.

Professor Bacevich had been an outspoken critic of the war since it began, but supported his son’s decision to serve his country in the military. A month before his son was killed, he wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “The truth is that next to nothing can be done to salvage Iraq. It no longer lies within the capacity of the United States to determine the outcome of events there. Iraqis will decide their own fate. We are spectators, witnesses, bystanders caught in a conflagration that we ourselves, in an act of monumental folly, touched off.”

And in the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly, he called the conflict a “disastrous war,” and noted that “the thousands of Americans killed in Iraq include no members of Congress and not a single general.”

The truth is that Bush does not listen to anyone who does not agree with his fixed opinion. Bush will not change course, Congress must do it for him.

Jon Monday