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Mr. Buchanan, I have to thank you just as Mr. Sweeney did for this column . Actually, I have followed you for years. You are way to the right of me, but I have always valued your thoughtful analysis and often find myself edified by it. Your column provides a valuable insight that may be lost on many: The Middle East today is just one more example of how ethnic tensions and power imbalances have such deadly potential to turn world order on its head. Too bad those two draft dodgers in the Oval Office didn't see that coming when they knocked out Iraq as the bulwark against Iran. You know, the Iraq that represented about 3 decades worth of U.S. strategic investment. Your column also suggests another proposition, though I don't really know if you meant it to or not: how hollow, nay, pathetic, Mr. McCain's line about preconditions for talking with Iran and other Evil Nations is, let alone his suggestion that opening condition free lines of communication merits comparison to the head-in-the-sand overtures for peace made by England prior to World War II. How does that Joplin song go? "When you ain't got nothin, you got nothin to lose." Thomas Friedman recently pointed out in a New York Times piece that, of course, when you want to start negotiating in earnest, you have to have leverage of some kind. The fact is that right now we have just about zippo, and it's time to start cleaning up Bush's big mess and figure out how to get some of it back.

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Sir; Thank you for the story; but I think you should look behind the logic that has been twisting our diplomacy for decades. We should not talk to the Persians without some concession. Why? Well, they would gain too much from the exchange, and if we do not force them to kowtow, then we lose face. Bullshet, sir. First of all, the world is too dangerous to not talk. Then, if there are real gievances against us the short and sure way to peace is dialogue. If anyone thinks they are going to gain inordinantly by having us sit down to dinner with them they are mistaken. It is not face that wins concessions, but credible threats of violence. We have thown away the very tool that might have earned us many concession, and still pretend we would be giving away too much by saying howdy do. This garbage should be tossed to the hogs. We should tell the world we don't play the face game, but the how to avoid terror and nuclear war games. A growing list of people who hate our guts, who have every reason to talk to us, who try to dialogue to an echoing silence or saber rattling means that we will find no solutions, and will pass greater and greater problems to the next generation. So what is new? As for your story; you realize that by giving away all that was possible to give to avoid war, that the British bought the moral high ground without firing a shot. It is essential in war to do all within ones power to avoid it, and to bargain in good faith. When the British people saw what was given, and how little the Germans could be trusted they were united in war. The exact opposite position was ours going into Iraq. We were not bargaining in good faith, The buildup and push for war went on without hesitation. We talked only because we were not yet prepared to act. As soon as we were prepared we pounced, and now, many of us wish we could unpounce. Let me ask you; do you think the world is ignorant of our motives and methods? They are not, and we should not be ignorant.