To the editor:

President Bush is trying to get a consensus to invade Iraq and destroy that country’s ability to create weapons of mass destruction, meaning nuclear weapons.

The lessons of history are clear. In the ’30s, Neville Chamberlin made numerous trips to negotiate with Adolph Hitler. He mentioned “Peace in our time.” Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939.

Japan invaded China during this same period, attempting to further their Hako Ichiu, “Seven corners of the world under one roof.” We ignored them until Dec. 7, 1941

We ignored the threats to Korea until hordes of the regular Chinese army crossed the Yalu River.

Osama Bin Laden attacked and seriously damaged the World Trade Center in 1993 and the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. His nature was known and understood.

Saddam Hussein invaded a non-threatening neighboring Arab country .

There were many warning signs prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that were neither heeded nor threaded together.

The writer George Santayana once stated, “Those who fail to learn from the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.”

Do we wait until these goths and vandals ship a container with a nuclear weapon into Los Angeles to learn another lesson of history?

Fred Whitehead,

Lawrence