Had Mr. Hoffman kept his tome in the form of an interrogative it would be easier to answer his questions. But as his form, like his reasoning, leaps from inane question to uninformed conjecture, I’ll do what I can to answer what I think he was asking, and dispute his poorly researched notions.

1. What will happen to ...:

a. The Kurds — Possessed a form of semi-autonomy prior to our miscue, and actually desire our help. We may choose to maintain some forces within their region. However doing so has its own risks.

The Turks will not look kindly on a Kurdish state on their border which has its own large Kurdish minority. (As an aside, a friend of mine told me of refueling fully armed Turkish F-4s in the early 1990s near the Kurdish region of Turkey. The planes would return to refuel on their way home, sans bombs. Wonder where all those bombs went?)

The Iranians also have a Kurdish minority and would cast a baleful eye on a new Kurdish state.

The Kurds are an ancient people. Xenophon and his 10,000 mercenaries fought Kurds on their way back to Helles 2,500 years ago. The Kurds simply have been less successful at building their own state than the people around them. Anything we do or don’t do has repercussions.

b. Sunnis, Shias, and the helpless — I can’t see where they will do a lot worse than they’re doing now, although they certainly might. The question shouldn’t be what will happen to them. Better the question should be, Can we do a whole lot about it at current or foreseeable troop levels?

c. The Iraqi government — It is decidedly pro-Shia and not greatly interested in justice as we know it. The government has shown little interest in governing. In the ensuing civil war, I could see the emergence of another strong man. He won’t be a Jeffersonian Democrat by any way, shape, or form.

2. Who benefits the most by our withdrawal? We do.

3. Undoubtedly our withdrawal will be trumpeted as a great triumph by what is left of al Qaeda. Their trumpeting is meaningless. They intend to attack us where and when they can from the shadows anyway. Their foreigners in Iraq will have a very tough time after we leave

4. This is a moot question. I do advocate pulling out now, as I have since before this misadventure began. As for the military screaming for more troops, I believe Mr. Hoffman is hearing what he wants to hear.

5. Bush didn’t purposely lie to us to protect oil or avenge his father. Bush is not very interested in the world and never has been. The late and great Molly Ivins wrote of Bush on April 7, 1999: “This is not a person of great depth or complexity or intelligence; he does not have many ideas ... I don’t think he has any idea why he’s running for the presidency, except that he’s competitive, and he can.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks there were many ways Mr. Bush could have gone. Invading Iraq seemed both safe and politically expedient. “Intelligence” didn’t need to be made up or slanted. “Intelligence” is merely data interpreted, so a little emphasis here, and a little deliberate ignorance there, and pretty soon, you got yourself a war, Mr. President.

The question I would have asked is this: If all you say is actually true, except for the link to al Qaeda, for which we have no evidence, where lies the threat to the United States? I would be curious to see Mr. Hoffman’s answer to that particular question.

Hoffman continues with his Republican talking points: Stay and fight; cut and run (a line from Xenophon’s “Anabasis”); war on terror; make the dead soldiers’ sacrifice meaningless.

I’ll tell you what is meaningless: One more American family who has to lose a son or daughter because people like you think we have to honor the dead guys by making more dead guys.

If this war is so important, if we just have to “triumph” there, then why doesn’t Congress or the President propose an occupation force large enough to control the country and its borders?

Let’s talk a little history, real history. When we defeated Japan and Germany, we had over 7 million men under arms. The countries we defeated and occupied had functioning governments essentially until their capitulation. The countries themselves were heavily damaged by war and denuded by casualties. They were utterly exhausted and with the boot on their necks. Compare that with the swift defeat of the Iraqi Army and the complete political incompetence on the part of this administration since that defeat.

And I’m still curious as to who this “We” are who have to “stay and fight to win. It’s not me. I haven’t seen anything resembling combat for a long time. It’s not Mr. Hoffman, and it’s certainly not George Bush or Mr. Deferment, Dick Cheney.

Somebody recently wrote to this paper asserting that I hate Republicans. Rubbish. The Republican Party has a bad case of dogmatic fever, and a touch of glandular blind followership.

I avoid stupidity, dislike incompetence and loath gutlessness. Getting in this war was stupid. The prosecution of this war has been incompetent. Adding 20 thousand more troops is a gutless attempt to put off the inevitable, resulting in the death of more American soldiers.

We can either treat this insurgency as Pershing’s generals did in the Philippines, which I don’t advocate, (two generals were tried for war crimes over 100 years ago; our troops killed 200,000 to 2 million Filipinos, but the insurgency was completely crushed), add 300,000 more troops, or get out.

Democrats didn’t vote to make this war happen. They voted two weeks before a mid-term election to give a (then-popular) president authority he said he needed to conduct foreign policy and apply pressure. Karl Rove’s little plan would have worked if reality hadn’t interfered.

I don’t whine about civilian casualties. On the other hand I’ve seen artillery shells landing in the middle of urban areas, and I didn’t like it. In Mr. Hoffman’s video games, like his life, everything is clean; there are no broken bodies lying about with guts strewn on the floor; no torn limbs and fetid stinking charnel houses. War is terrible and unnecessary war is a crime.

Most galling is not the fact that Dick Cheney gets on TV and tells us this was the right thing to do and we’re on our way to victory. Most disturbing is that 30 percent of our population is willing to discard reality, and believe in the same people who put us into this terrible, wasteful, counterproductive war. Now that is unpatriotic.

Timothy J. Parker
Peachtree City, Ga.

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