Person of character could put an end to the Iraq war

To the editor:

In our local newspaper, the Contra Costa Times, there was a piece on the endless war in Iraq. In it, Kevin Sexton, political science professor at Southeast Missouri State University, is quoted as saying: "We're so deep into the war now, I don't think one person is simply going to be able to end it."

Poppycock. It requires a person of character, will and determination with the courage of his convictions. Such persons exist, though they are not common. I'm thinking now of persons like Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who saw that Woodrow Wilson's supposed neutrality before World War I was bogus and said so. And resigned.

If Gore Vidal on the left or William F. Buckley Jr. on the right had been president before World War II, they would have spoken out on Franklin D. Roosevelt's maneuverings to get us into the war by making utterly impossible demands on the Japanese, admittedly aggressors.

If anyone has the slightest doubt that FDR intentionally kept the commanders in Hawaii in the dark, I can only say that the late historian Barbara Tuchman conceded it, though it nearly killed her to do so. Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. knew the truth and could not utter FDR's name without expletives.

No, a person of character would simply defy the military, the contractors and the Israel lobby and say simply, "We're pulling out."

BEVERLY MEYER, Walnut Creek, Calif.