Editor,
The president's recent talk of attacking Iran - possibly using nuclear bunker-buster bombs - is historically blind and devoid of all reason and foresight.
We must act to stop this groundless and counter-productive war mongering - and we must act now.
National Public Radio featured an Ivy League professor who compared the current standoff with Iran to the Cuban Missile Crisis - a comparison that various members of Congress are starting to echo. This is an absurd and dangerous comparison, since Cuba was backed by the enormous Soviet war machine and intercontinental nukes were physically on their way to Cuba when the president considered an invasion.
In fact, Robert MacNamara revealed in the film "The Fog of War" that he believed Cuba had nukes on the ground at the time - which distances that crisis even more starkly from today's president-made mock crisis.
Iran not only lacks nuclear warheads, it has repeatedly announced its willingness to submit to international inspection and abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory - a treaty, of course, which the United States has refused to abide by. We are the only major power demonstrating such belligerence and disdain for our international peers, and for the health and safety of future generations.
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The Bush administration is engaging in the same completely unfounded propaganda it spewed in the run-up to the Iraq invasion - except here, we have even more evidence that Iran does not have weapons of mass destruction.
President Bush's messianic, millenarian battle cry of world domination must be answered by reason and calm. Otherwise he will further destabilize the Middle East, exponentially increase the clear and present danger from Islamic jihadists and threaten our entire way of life, which, as everyone knows, depends on a steady supply of cheap crude oil from Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Our representatives must summon the courage of their convictions and stand up in Congress to declare their refusal to watch the president commit yet another unprovoked, near-sighted, self-defeating and immoral act of war.
If they do not immediately begin to act in the interest of future generations of Americans, myself and dozens of my law school peers may consider publicly expressing a vote of no confidence in them before the next congressional elections.
We want principled action in the form of a clear and unequivocal expression of lucid foreign policy on the floor of Congress - and we want it now.
Joel Young
UNM student
