What U.S. foreign policy needs is sense of ethics

Jonathan Riches' editorial Monday was both misguided and naive. The CIA's 1953 coup in Iran overthrew a democratically-elected government. Does this not count as an "attack?" Decades of violence and brutality followed the coup, and a wave of anti-American sentiment followed close behind.

One might think that surely, there was some noble reason for a democracy to impose such suffering upon another democratic nation. But unless you consider money a noble cause, this simply isn't the case. The coup was a response to Iran's democratically-elected parliament moving to nationalize the oil industry, essentially cutting out British and American investors.

The American people did not give their consent to such acts of aggression.

In fact, history shows that the American people rarely have any influence over our nation's foreign policy. Foreign policy is dictated almost entirely by the realist notion of the absolute importance of the nation state, regardless of what form of government is in control. This was not a once-off occurrence either; there was Guatemala, Cuba, Chile and Iraq to name a few. Thus, world peace will not come from the spread of this pseudo-democracy, but rather from the elimination of corporate lobbying and the installation of some sense of ethics into our foreign policy.

Brendan Moloney
computer science senior

Social Security benefits shouldn't be cut

I rise in opposition to the proposed cuts of benefits, to the adding of $2 trillion to the deficit, to the proposed gambling of our future. That is why I, a young American Democrat, oppose the privatization of Social Security being pushed by Bush and his cronies.

Every American worker should get the benefits they pay for through Social Security, but under Bush's plan, younger workers' retirement, disability and survivor benefits would be cut by more than 40 percent.

Social Security will be in even more trouble when approximately $2 trillion (yes that's, trillion, with a "T") will be drained from the Social Security Trust Fund and added to the record $2.57 trillion budget which already cuts several programs and will leave the federal student loan program scrambling to find $10.7 billion over the next decade.

Shall I dare mention nearly 60 percent of 18- to 39-year-olds oppose private Social Security accounts? Maybe they realize what is at stake: our future.

I guess that puts into perspective what Bush's priorities are: dismantling the most successful American program ever to make permanent his tax cuts for the wealthy. Thanks a lot, Bush.

David Martinez
secondary education sophomore

U.S. has used force to subvert democracy

Mr. Riches seems to be having some trouble thinking of a case where a democratic nation has attacked another. I can think of at least three instances: Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973) and Nicaragua (1984-85). In all three, a democratic nation, in these cases the United States, used military force to subvert democracy and overthrow democratically-elected leaders. In the case of Chile, Kissinger even admits to saying, "The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

I'm sure right-wing apologists use the semantic games that magically exclude imprisoned "enemy combatants" from being POWs to write these off, since legions of marines were not deployed. Instead, the United States chose to train mercenaries ("contractors" is the popular word now). Now, if Iran were to train an army of foreign nationals and/or U.S. citizens to overthrow our government, would we not consider that an act of war? Maybe even state-sponsored "terrorism"? How is that any different from the instances mentioned above?

Christopher Haney
environmental science graduate student