by James Glaser
April 3, 2007

What happens when you have a neighbor who constantly bad mouths you to the whole block? You never talk to him, and he never talks to you, but year after year everyone tells you that he calls you some awful names, and says you do horrible things.

Well, what happens when that bad mouthing neighbor needs your help? Do you just blow off all those years of anger at him and do the right thing, or do you sit there and watch as this bad neighbor's troubles mount?

Well, the United States is having a problem much like this. We have bad-mouthed both Syria and Iran for decades. We don't talk to them, and they don't talk to us, but any chance we get, we start telling whomever will listen what SOB's these two countries are.

We are still mad at Iran for taking over our embassy and holding our people captive. Of course we never talk about why the Iranian people did that, and for sure we never talk about how we taught the government they overthrew how to torture their people.

The Shah of Iran, the United States puppet we had placed in charge of that country, was Iran's "Saddam". The Shah was every bit as ruthless as Saddam, he just didn't have the White House trashing his reputation like Saddam did. The people Iran did what we wanted to people of Iraq to do. The Iranians took to the streets and overthrew the despot that ruled their country.

Syria got on Washington's shit list because they attacked Israel and have always backed the Palestinian people. No matter who you are, those two things will make you an outcast with Washington.

So, for decades we have been bad mouthing Iran and Syria, and they have been bad mouthing us. That is where we picked up the name "The Great Satan."

Now we have the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi going over on her own, talking to the Syrian government, and George Bush and the White House are upset about that. Of course a series of Republican Congressman have been doing that same thing, but that was never mentioned,

Here is what I think about talking to Syria and Iran. As the world gets smaller and smaller due to technology, those two countries get closer and closer to us. We have been on the "outs" with them for many years. We have a big problem in Iraq right now, and both of these countries border Iraq. They can help us, or they can hurt us.

If we continue to bad-mouth them to the rest of the world, and make no effort to talk to them, then for sure they are going to try to hurt us in respect to Iraq. If we talk to them, maybe they will give us a hand, or maybe they just won't work against us. We know for sure we lose if we don't talk—we have a chance at something good if we do talk.

That seems like a no brainer. Talking to Iran and Syria is just plain old common sense, but right now, Washington has no common sense. So, I doubt if George Bush will follow Pelosi's lead and start talks that could help our country.

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