To the editor:

Your Nov. 16 editorial criticized the new Democratic congressional majority for asking hard questions about the Iraq war. You misunderstand the reasons why Americans repudiated the White House at the polls.

The American people issued a mandate for change. We spoke with wisdom and maturity, so unlike the president and vice president and their discredited ideologues Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Voters placed their trust, during really difficult times, in representatives willing to challenge the arrogance that has caused America’s worst military-diplomatic error of the past half-century.

You oddly assert the Democrats acted like “know-it-alls” while peddling “nice-sounding, easy solutions” for the Iraq disaster. You ignore four years of White House happy talk, at best, and outright lies, at worst, about the reasons for invading Iraq and the results of our occupation. The president set the bar pretty high for “know-it-allism” by rejecting even thoughtful criticism. The weekend before Election Day, right here in Kansas, he denounced Democrats as unpatriotic and misguided for simply asking him to share the facts about Iraq!

Don’t worry about Democrats “new attitude about using national power.” The world will welcome what it hasn’t seen for six years in Washington: careful use of our economic strength and bold promotion of our powerful ideals, in tandem with allies who share our values. That’s nothing new, and nothing especially Democratic. A great Kansan, Dwight Eisenhower, did it successfully for eight years.

Karl Brooks,

Lawrence