To the editor:

Those who do not learn from the errors of the past are condemned to repeat them.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to decide which lessons to apply.

Fred Whitehead believes the lesson to be learned is from Hitler. Hitler was terrible because he had a theory of racial superiority, which led to an announced plan to conquer the world. He had an efficient army and an industrial base. He invaded his neighbors, and his ally by treaty, Japan, attacked us. We defeated both in war.

The United States had another great opponent in recent times, oversimplified as the International Community Conspiracy (ICC). The ICC had a theory of the superiority of their system, took over neighboring countries and worked for regime change here. The centers of the ICC are dead or drastically changed — without an invasion.

The war on terrorism seems a bit like the struggle with the ICC, President Kennedy’s “long, twilight struggle.”

But Saddam Hussein has no known connection with Sept. 11. An Iraq invasion is a distraction from eliminating terror. He has no plan to take over the world or even the Middle East. He leads a poor, largely destroyed country

The world is filled with unpleasant regimes that mistreat their people and their neighbors — for example, those remnants of the ICC, the Russian Federation (which has nuclear weapons targeted at us) and Red China. We need to deal with a complicated world, and not seeks instant answers in false analogies. “Peace is patriotic. No war.”

Anne Haehl

Lawrence