Forget the pretext. The invasion is the point.

Manhattan: Voicer Dan Cerrone expresses the same worries as most Americans when it comes to the United States getting militarily involved in foreign conflicts.

The U.S. has a storied history of starting phony wars to justify its many foreign interventions, such as the sinking of the munitions ship USS Maine in 1898. This act got the U.S. involved in the Spanish-American War for the express purpose of taking over Spanish colonies throughout the world. Then there was the Vietnam War in the 1960s, fought to save a corrupt South Vietnam government from an invasion by a Communist North Vietnam. Of course, more recently, we can’t forget the military debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, when Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

President Trump’s witless invasion of Iran is simply an extension of these past American geopolitical blunders. However, what has been done can not be undone! It’s evident that the Middle East in general needs a credible nation-building template to follow — a nation that promotes peace, secular freedom, democracy, tolerance and economic prosperity. Not the same old rhetoric that America says it can provide but never does!

The Kurds represent a credible model for the new governments of Iran and Syria to follow. It won’t happen because these two murderous governments, along with Turkey, have tried to jail or eviscerate the Kurdish population for more than 100 years. Gerard Rosenthal

Manhattan: So Kim Jong-Il designated his son, Kim Jong-Un, as his successor, with the public designation occurring in 2010. Now we have the........

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