Dear Mr. President

     Here’s what you said to our troops in Kuwait:

“There is no doubt in my mind that we will succeed. There is no doubt in my mind that when history was written, the final page will say, ‘Victory was achieved by the United States of America for the good of the world’.”

Mr. President, I trained as an historian before I turned to music.  Historians have much in common with investigative journalists in that they seek to be objective.  They try to dig out the nitty gritty of what happened.  They look for the deeper causes and the long-lasting results.  

Historians will see in this war the greed for oil and power as the cause of an illegal, pre-emptive strike against a largely unarmed foe. Historians will see the terrifyingly dangerous precedent this war set.    Historians will see a war that cost the United States its reputation and its honor.  Historians will also see a war that cost the United States a great deal of its security and a whole lot of its cash.

It is very hard to envision an outcome to the war in Iraq that will outweigh the egregious error of starting this war in the first place.

Sincerely, MS