To the Editor:
Re “The Unthinkable Option” (column, The New York Times on the Web, Feb. 5):
Roger Cohen says that “the U.S. military option” against Iran is “unthinkable.” He warns of the “stubborn effectiveness” of the Iranian Army. But this is an army that suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in the nine years it took just to fight Iraq to a stalemate. Didn’t America twice defeat the Iraqi Army in mere weeks?
Mr. Cohen also warns that attacking Iran would result in rockets from Iranian proxies hitting Israel. Are these the Hezbollah rocket attacks that Israel put a stop to in 2006, or the Hamas rocket attacks that Israel just answered?
Mr. Cohen also predicts the eruption of “Muslim rage” following any attack. For all the times that the specter of the Muslim street has been invoked, it has not yet erupted. One begins to wonder if it is no more than a fictional device designed to represent the views of Western liberals.
Julie Cashon
Malvern, Pa., Feb. 5, 2009
Note from KBJ: The United States of America is the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world. Those facts alone are enough to make others hate us, envy us, and, where these emotions are powerful enough, want to destroy us. We are hated not for what we do, but for what we are. Thus, it's a fallacy to think that if we change our behavior toward, say, Iran, we will change attitudes toward us. We should do what's in our interest, period.
