In early August, General John Abizaid, the commander of the U.S. Central Command and the most knowledgeable senior military official about Iraq, expressed his fears to a Senate Committee that conditions in Iraq are the very next thing to a “civil war.” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went further one day later when he wrote that our armed forces in Iraq “are baby-sitting a civil war.” Can any good come of continued U.S. presence in such a conflict? Isn’t it time to consider letting the Sunnis and Shiites settle their centuries-old animosity without our forces caught in the middle?
Wisdom imparted by past presidents of our nation has never been more needed than today. As the quagmire in Iraq deepens, and as cries are heard for U.S. involvement in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon, George Washington’s advice should be heeded. He urged commercial relations with other nations “but to have with them as little political connection as possible.” The sixth U.S. president, John Quincy Adams, concurred when he stated: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” And Calvin Coolidge, our nation’s 30th chief executive, famously summarized: “Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.”