Obama should have ended Iraq war

The greatest disappointment President Obama has given us so far has been his failure to withdraw American forces from Iraq (and Afghanistan) and his insistence on spending ever more billions to "prove we are strong" and destabilize the Muslim world.

The American voters gave him a golden opportunity to try to get us unstuck from the Middle Eastern situation, and he has instead caved in to the war bureaucracies in Washington.

Reader Bob Lowth (July 18) thinks this means that Obama has "grown up" and recognized the "awesome responsibility" of a president.

I think it means that Obama is trapped in a self-defeating foreign policy sink hole which will suck in mountains of borrowed money and produce nothing but a never-ending spiral of violence. The Middle East is a sea of factionalism. The only issue all sides agree on is hatred of arrogant infidel foreigners occupying their countries and killing their people.

If we spend enough money (and sacrifice enough soldiers), we can make our military a semi-permanent factor in the rivalries of that region, but we cannot bring peace or satisfy the Muslim desire for independence and self-respect. All we can do is steal some oil, beat up people who insult us, and, in the end, go bankrupt.

How appropriate that the British are in there with us since they started this mess 80-odd years ago. They did the same dumb things we are doing, and for their pains, they lost their empire. No doubt we are next in line for that honor. Nothing awesome here; just a big waste.

Anthony Nelson

Rolling Meadows