Editor,
I agree with Rachel Fredman's letter on April 6 about factual accuracy. In columnist Scott Darnell's case, his entire April 12 column was libelous and defamatory. The title of the column, "Iran advances global terrorism," is beyond misleading. If Iran allegedly has ties to Hezbollah, that is not global - that just means it could be involved in the Israel-Lebanon conflict. Violence that the U.S. labels "terrorism" has only been violence against U.S. interests. Iran has not been shown to support al-Qaida and is no threat to the U.S. in
any way.
Although Darnell accuses Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being "anti-Semitic," the minorities of Iran, which include Jews, are more equal with the Iranian majority than minorities in Israel are with Israel's majority. Unlike Muslims or Christians in Israel, Jews in Iran don't have to have different-colored license plates, and their land isn't confiscated if they leave for a while.
Darnell tries to make an enemy out of Iran by mentioning it along with 9/11, even though neither the people of Iran nor their government had connections to 9/11. Darnell accuses Iranians of hating British detainee Faye Turney, sponsoring terrorism and being radical to the core. He libels Iranians even though he has never set foot in Iran to find out how its people feel about British people or to find out that they are as peaceful as any other people.
It's funny that while he is enraged about 15 British sailors being held for two weeks, he advocates voting for a president who imprisons thousands of innocent people for years without due process, most of whom are tortured or held in conditions that make the treatment of the sailors seem like a walk in the park. Darnell, conveniently, never writes about these atrocities in his columns.
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As proven by Monday's tragic events, Darnell has a far greater chance of being killed in a school shooting than by the "Islamic fundamentalists" he struggles to make an enemy out of. He libels "liberals" as hating the U.S., which is more hypocrisy, since he has not made a single argument in favor of U.S. interests.
Another pure lie in Darnell's article is saying that Syria sponsors terrorists. In reality, President Bashar al-Assad has a history of cracking down on anyone who is suspected of having ties to al-Qaida. Darnell writes that "we must fight for our safety against a burgeoning, radical ideology." In the past five years, an American's chance of dying from terrorism has been far less than the chance of dying from smoking, alcohol-related car accidents, drowning, being struck by lightning or simple homicide. What good is a political science degree if you're only going to address imaginary problems?
Stop surrendering tax dollars to so-called defense corporations instead of to the millions of emaciated, diseased and land mine-crippled children around the world. Give up hateful double standards about issues such as human rights and stop talking about people in other parts of the world as if you're an expert on them. In January of 2003, Darnell wrote a letter encouraging the invasion of Iraq. Thousands of children are dead already, and the threat of terror hasn't changed - is he happy now?
Ahmad Musleh
UNM student
