"Iran Behind the Veil".

Regarding William F. Jasper's article "Iran Behind the Veil" in the October 16 issue, our real problem with the Middle East is a failure by U.S. elites to agree that the Middle East, and Iran, does not belong to us. Neither do the people who live there belong to us.

I believe that freedom is not just a word. It means something. We have no business in stealing it away or providing it to those who live within these countries. Further, the residents are responsible for their governments, not us.

Also, I disagree with Mr. Jasper. We do need to use diplomacy. We need to put Israel on notice that it needs to become democratic and seek real peace with neighboring countries. We also need to withdraw from Iraq quickly. We need to provide economic aid to this country for 10 years.

Our diplomatic policy should respect the sovereignty of other countries. It should also be favorable to countries that favor and pursue freedom and not tyranny.

We need to create solutions.

JAMES ARFT

Rochester, New York 

In his article, Mr. Jasper said we do not need to engage in either diplomacy or war with Iran but should "stop helping unsavory regimes or sponsors of those regimes."--Ed.

Since our great nation has sort of declared war on Saddam Hussein, WMD, and now global terrorism, our country has discovered a continually shrinking coalition of the willing and a corresponding abundance of enemies. What few "friends" we do have subsist in their sovereign attachment to our apron strings by virtue of our foreign aid largesse. This irony is not lost on Iranian President/ figurehead Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, lately come to the public rostrum to plead for peace, love, and brotherhood, ya'll.

In "Iran Behind the Veil" (October 16), William Jasper does a masterful job of sounding the tocsin to us all that we should not be too quick to smooch with the soothsaying Iranian dervish, for he speaketh with a forked tongue, but Jasper's crystalline logic comes a cropper in one area--Hezbollah.

Here is the non sequitur that leaps off the page: "Iran's Hezbollah terrorist proxies have turned Lebanon into an inferno."

Reading that three times, if I were from Mars, I would have to say that Hezbollah really loosed an attack on Lebanon. But all of us know that it was Israel that bombed Lebanon back into the Stone Age. Cluster bomblets littered the infrastructure of what used to be apartment buildings, playgrounds, bridges, and factories essential for commerce and carrying on the daily trade and business practices of a bustling and thriving peaceful country.

Now, if Hezbollah really did all of this, and for the sake of argument I will concede it did all this destruction, then who flew the airplanes over the streets and suburbs of southern Lebanon and dropped all those American-made cluster bombs scattering unexploded bomblets over an area that prevented 800,000 Lebanese civilians from returning to their homes? I don't think Hezbollah has any fighter aircraft. But our staunchest democratic ally in the Middle East does. But, shhhhh, tell the readers that the bad guys are Hezbollah.

But really, I thought the rest of the article was thoughtful, balanced, and provocative.

PAT FLANAGAN, M.D.

Waukesha, Wisconsin