First lady Laura Bush is a wonderful advocate for books and reading. I hope her Christmas present to the president is a book by George H.W. Bush. It’s called “A World Transformed” (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998).

Wouldn’t it be a Christmas miracle if the president opened the present early and read to page 489 by Christmas Eve:

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed. … Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different – and perhaps barren – outcome.”

The president would recognize the wisdom of his father’s words. He’d declare the war over. He’d give Americans what they want for Christmas – their sons and daughters. And he’d give the world the greatest present of all: peace.

Tom Bulger, Wilton

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