Dear Mr. Dolan-I was perusing the Alumni site when I stumbled across the Villanovan and your “nifty” little piece from last week. Time for a wake up call. Like a true Frenchman, or a true liberal, you have chosen the Al Jezeera viewpoint of “American Domination” or as I and the rest of America like to put it “Liberation”. For some reason you liberals enjoy choosing in-action during critical moments. Should an embassy be blown to hell or perhaps a naval vessel attacked or perhaps a country suffer at the hands of a brutal dictator for a quarter of a century all resulting in thousands if not millions of deaths you liberals enjoy turning a blind eye rather than taking the responsibility to defend the weak and providing a platform where they can have an equal say. “It’s imposing our will on others” you might say so instead of helping them you choose to do nothing; standing there while people suffer and die, even your own countrymen. Your beloved Bill Clinton is a prime example of this. Thanks to his genius of not going after those responsible for the African embassy bombings as well as the USS Cole (oh right he lobbed a few tomahawks into Sudan and Afghanistan- very effective) thousands of people were murdered in NYC, Washington DC and in the Pennsylvania countryside. His failure to take responsibility, his lack of action led to events far worse. Syria and Iran are terrorist backing countries- a known fact. They aid cowardly people who strap explosives to themselves in the hopes of killing as many people as they can. They also aid people who would like nothing more than to see you and I dead. So let’s use diplomacy to deal with terrorists and dictators- right? Have you ever tried to reason with a terrorist or a dictator? They ignore you and go on about their business of trying to eliminate you due to your opposition towards them. So now Syria and Iran have the choice to do the right thing and discontinue their backing of terrorism. They can also choose to provide aid to the Iraqi people as well as come to the table with a peace process for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. They can use their wealth and power to have a postive impact on their region and their people. But to continue down the road as Iraq did leads to regime change and a voice for the people- two positive things that were proven with this Iraq war. Or do you not recall seeing the Iraqi people kissing and hugging and thanking our troops for giving them a new lease on life? Sure, some of what has occurred in the Middle East has been due to our involvement but most circumstances were due to certain fanatical religious groups exploiting their will on the people. One thing the US should not be credited with is supplying “Iran with a bunch of weapons to fight Iraq back in the good old days”. Check your history. Why would we supply a country with weapons that stormed our embassy and kidnapped our countrymen for over a year? We didn’t. And we also are not “dead set on liberating everyone”- just dead set on making the world a safer place so when you get older and have children they won’t have to worry about some insane tyrant lobbing WMD at them. So wake up Mr. Dolan- choosing to not act is like not writing the term paper that’s 80% of your grade- it leads to a F- failure. Only in this case it leads to death, destruction and fear. And keep in mind, you’ll have a chance to make it up but can you say the same for those who bear the brunt of a dictator or a bomb strapped terrorist? You’re just failing the final, they’re consequences are final. Dave Cotter Villanova ’96