You mean the '30-year war?'

Thirty years of war!

During an interview with USA Today on Oct. 6, Leon Panetta, former CIA and Pentagon chief, was asked to assess the future of the battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and other fundamentalist groups. He replied: "I think we are kind of looking at a 30-year war."

Yes, he said a 30-year war!

His remark borders on pathological. To say nothing of its being diplomatically irresponsible and its potential to inflame the determination of extremists. Consider, too, what Panetta crassly disregards — the effect of his words on the morale of the tens of millions of people in the Middle East who yearn for a more peaceful future.

Panetta, after all, is a key architect of the misguided war on terrorism. He is also a foreign-policy confidant of Hillary Clinton. So a Clinton presidency might mean, well, 30 years of war!

It would be better to do nothing than to follow Panetta's logic.

Instead of Panetta's insane future, the United States should notify the world that it will be removing all troops from the Middle East, will immediately stop all bombing and drone attacks, and will apologize to the Iraqi people for invading their nation.

There are fundamentalist movements in all religions in the world. Fortunately, they are a minority, yet they make lots of noise. All seem to want to go backward in history, while the vast majority of people reject such a course for humanity. Fundamentalism will run its course. To respond to it militarily is counterproductive.

Another fundamentalism is Western imperialism, led by the United States. In short, imperialism is a mentality that says: We want your oil, minerals and markets — and on our terms. This worldview — with its network of military bases and a foreign policy of aggression — also desires to go back in time. But this paradigm is over. It can be enforced only by military aggression. Yet the American people are tired of war and tired of paying the bills while a few are enriched.

While ISIL is a reactionary, violent, fundamentalist movement, one could think of its development as another message to the United States emblematic of a consensus on the main streets and neighborhoods of Middle Eastern nations. And that message is: "Americans go home."

This is good advice. More and more Americans are of similar mind. In a late 2013 poll by the Pew Research Center, 52 percent said we should mind our own business, the highest response in nearly 50 years. Yet the governing elite started another war.

Panetta, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Cheney, as well as Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. John McCain, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and others, should apologize to the American people and our soldiers and their families for choosing a military response to terrorism that destabilized the world and made Americans less safe. Then they should resign from political life and hang their heads in shame for the death and destruction they caused.