I needed to respond to "Liberals lead America to war in Iraq, Vietnam (April 8)," because it puts forth a very sketchy view of world history.

First of all, in Vietnam, Lyndon B. Johnson was not the president who got us involved. Yes, he was the president who sank us deeper but largely because he was in the pocket of the notoriously conservative Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted to "take the fight to" the Communists. In fact, it was a conservative, former army general named Dwight D. Eisenhower who began our involvement in Vietnam by sending military "advisors" who soon were forced to fight for the South Vietnamese. Later on, we got more heavily involved in Vietnam when reports of a torpedo attack on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin gave us a reason to officially get into the "conflict." (In the last year, it has come out that this attack never happened.) What was left out about LBJ was his incredible record on social issues. He was a champion of civil rights and social works programs (liberal ideals) that have improved the lives of countless Americans. The social messes in this country are and always have been ignored by conservatives and Republicans, and liberals and Democrats have been made to fight to clean them up.

In Iraq, if we want to say that Saddam Hussein should have been taken out, that goes right back to President George H.W. Bush, who didn't finish the job in 1991. If Bush No. 1 had pushed the United Nations to go into Baghdad and take Saddam down when the first war was fought, we wouldn't be where we are now. If we had gone into Baghdad back then, we would have done it with the support of the Arab nations surrounding Iraq, and we wouldn't have succeeded in unifying the Arab world against us while alienating and distancing ourselves from our allies.

I want to remind you that George W. Bush said he would be the great unifier, but since 2000 the world has only become more polarized, unstable and dangerous. Eventually, it will be the other nations of the world who may have to bail us out. But, who will come to our aid?