The 'Eagle Times' Student Newspaper: Editorials

America's old thorn stings again

Commentary By Trent Strunk

February 21, 2007

With the continued war effort in Iraq, the Middle East has only become more violent and more aggressive toward the United States and its foreign policy. One of the ringleaders is the country of Iran.

Iran wasn't always trouble for the U.S. In fact, in 1953, America used its newfound global might to take on the role of turning the Iranian government into one of its allies. Up until 1979, it worked. Then the Islamic Revolution occurred, overthrowing the Shah and establishing the stage for Iran's current regime.

Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the situation has only been fueled by the development of Iran's nuclear interest. So what are we to do against this threat to international security? President George W. Bush thinks that we should actually attack Iran; his plan was only strengthened when he told the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up plans for a massive air and naval strike on Iran's key facilities.

Even though Bush believes that bombing Iran will solve all our problems, forget Iraq, this could very well lead to one of the worst decisions in presidential history. The fact that Iran has stated that any attack on them will result in the attack of American interest across the globe should not only worry the government, it should also worry citizens of the United States from here in the heartland to those in American Embassy's. With Tehran's ability to use terrorist groups to strike not only the Middle East but also use them to strike our allies and even us, Iran is not a country with which to mess around.

Terrorist attacks, though, could be the least of our worries. If President Bush were to actually strike, we might see gas prices raise to $8 or even $10 per gallon. Americans could also see a China or Russia counter, not necessarily militarily, but through simple economics. China produces a large amount of the products we use in our cars, our clothes, and even computers. If they saw it fit, they could simply stop sending the products.

So I believe that if the United States were to attack Iran, we could very well see the country face tremendous losses from terrorist strikes and even economic collapse. That's why we need to face the matter diplomatically, especially now that we have almost sealed the deal with North Korea's nuclear program. The North Korea deal only proves that even with the most extreme of countries, diplomacy can have an effect.