Editor,
After reading Scott Darnell's rhetorical column about fear and hate of Iran on Thursday, I have to wonder if he also believes that we won the Vietnam War and that O.J. Simpson was innocent. There is no question that we must take a strong stance against the development of nuclear weapons by Iran, but how we go about it requires new thinking.
The saber-rattling of a squinty-eyed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not concern me as much as the belligerent policies of the Bush administration. The bold actions of Iran in taking British hostages certainly is a statement that it has no desire to be pushed around, like America has done to Iraq. Perhaps Darnell does not recall that our chaotic, heavy-handed polices date back more than 50 years, when we installed the Shah of Iran to replace a democratically elected leader, which eventually led to a much bigger hostage crisis. Or, that it was Bush who publicly put Iran in the "axis of evil." It is no wonder that Iran wants to kick at the threat we clearly pose to the region.
Both Bush and Ahmadinejad will come and go soon, hopefully through democratic means. In the meantime, our government needs to consider a diplomatic surge, rather than a troop surge, to open the door to new relations with Iran, Syria and hapless Iraq. Though Rep. Nancy Pelosi would not be my choice to begin such an effort, I appreciate her courage to try - though it is meaningless without the support of the guys who run the White House and arrogantly control foreign policy.
It is unfortunate that our government dismissed the recent recommendations of the Arab League, which proposed that the U.S. must serve as an honest broker in creating a just solution to the Palestinian situation. It claimed this would dissolve virtually all the credible terrorist threat to America from the Muslim world. Of course, this would require that Israel be willing to withdraw to the 1967 West Bank borders and agree to never use its nuclear weapons. Perhaps it is time we listen carefully to the Arab world, rather than continue to do most of the talking from only our own perspective.
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Bill Niendorff
UNM graduate student
