In 1997, a group of conservatives, many now serving in the Bush administration, including Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, proposed a foreign policy for the United States as the world’s sole remaining superpower. The policy was recommended to President Clinton, but was rejected as too extreme.

The election of George W. Bush, who needed a foreign policy, provided the project with favorable consideration. Iraq was an obvious candidate to challenge as a “… regime hostile to our interests and values …” as Cheney, then defense secretary, had unsuccessfully urged the first President Bush at the end of the Gulf War.

Our planners disregarded the history and culture of Iraq, which became a country only after World War I, when victorious Allies carved up the defeated Ottoman Empire, which had held together its numerous antagonistic ethnic, religious, regional and political factions for more than 500 years by massive force and political manipulations. Iraqis bitterly resented the British occupation that followed under a League of Nations mandate, and subsequent rule of British-sponsored kings. A military coup overthrew the last monarch in the late 1950s and established a “republic,” governed by a succession of brutal dictators, Saddam Hussein being the latest.

Even without historical precedent, perhaps eventually a responsible, representative government can be formed in Iraq. But it’s clear the Iraqis prefer to work out their own political solution. Our adventure was sadly ill-advised and counterproductive. We, and the Iraqis, are now paying the price.

Dorothy E. Prince, Auburn