Some 45 years after the 1967 Middle East War, intransigent conflicts in that region remain unresolved. The critical issues have been clear for decades, but the lack of resolve to bring about permanent peace has produced a discouraging feeling of being stuck in time.

Difficult issues sometimes seem beyond solution, and that has been what the U.S. Postal Service has been dealing with for more than a decade. Financial challenges stemming from the arrival of the Internet and the growing share that shipping competitors such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service have been extracting from the post office’s business volume have thrust it on a bumpy road.

There is no doubt, the Postal Service is in a war for its survival. It is butting heads with realities that threaten its long-term survival, if major changes are not forthcoming.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe’s latest report to Congress — that the Postal Service could be losing as much as $18.2 billion a year by 2015 without major changes — demands more than discussion by federal lawmakers. The quasi-governmental agency must be given approval by Congress to make the kind of changes necessary to once again become a financially viable entity.

One of the changes that seems unavoidable is switching to five-day-a-week delivery for general mail. That proposal was put forth in an April 9, 2001, Butler Eagle editorial that dealt with some of the same major Postal Service issues that remain entrenched today.

And, even if that scaled-back delivery schedule comes to pass, what was said in that editorial of nearly 11 years ago remains true: “Even if ending regular Saturday delivery helps the USPS delay another series of rate increases, the future does not look encouraging.”

The Postal Service must not only make changes in mail delivery and the price of postage, but it also must face the reality that its burgeoning labor costs still are the major cause of why it’s in such a dire financial mess — labor costs and a glut of post offices that could be scaled back.

Even with a new thrust aimed at cutting labor costs, eliminating small postal facilities and consolidating other operations, the agency still will face major challenges as more people opt to pay bills online or by phone, rather than by sending payments by mail.

The Postal Service’s plight is likely to continue evoking troublesome headlines, and that makes another part of the 2001 editorial relevant today:

“The perennial suggestion by some that the Postal Service should be privatized or its monopoly ended should also be re-examined.”

In addition to five-day delivery and a proposal for a 5-cent increase in the cost of a stamp, Donahoe reiterated to Congress a proposal that includes closing up to 252 mail-processing centers and 3,700 local post offices and slowing first-class delivery by one day. According to Donahoe, the suggestions for stabilizing the agency’s fiscal picture would enable it to save $20 billion a year by 2015, repay its $12.9 billion debt to the Treasury, and return to profitability.

Maybe.

But, before any of that, the agency is in need of congressional concurrence, and lawmakers already are stalled over the various recovery recommendations. For lawmakers, scaling back the nation’s postal operation is a political hot potato because, in many instances, it means closing a post office in their own districts, something most constituents strongly oppose.

Some issues never go away, and in both of these cases — regarding the Postal Service and Middle East — it’s because of a lack of genuine will to resolve them that their solutions have remained so elusive.