To the editor:

After performing brilliantly in conventional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration bogged down in mismanaged guerrilla wars it has no competency to wage. Before the Iraq war, they scotched State Department plans for civilian reconstruction (and why weren’t at least a few American soldiers taught Arabic?). That has probably made their goals in Iraq unreachable.

But what were those goals? We now know from various statements that the danger of Saddam giving (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction to terrorists was merely a cover story the bureaucrats could agree on, and Saddam never had any important links with international terrorists (but now they’re streaming into Iraq).

Yet, strangely, administration goals really did relate to terrorism. They wanted to create a new Middle Eastern platform so they could dump the terrorist-backing Saudis, and they wanted to install a new form of pro-Western regime in the region. Bellicose and illegal policies of the so-called “realist” persuasion, yes, but at least there was an inner logic.

But they failed at the outset to provide the resources needed for law and order and civilian government, so the Iraqis have turned against them. The best they could reasonably do now would be cutting United States losses by rapid withdrawal covered by a full United Nations takeover — which Bush appears too proud to accept. Instead we have a $100 billion quagmire which is a defeat in the struggle against terrorism.

David Burress,

Lawrence