Are you suggesting that Iran and every other Muslim nation constitute a “a region of the world where little girls have acid thrown in their faces if they try to go to school, women have their noses cut off for refusing to marry men they don’t love, or are buried up to their necks and stoned to death for eloping with men they do love, doctors can be ordered to sever people’s spines in eye-for-an-eye vengeance, and daily newspapers routinely refer to Christians and Jews as “apes” and “pigs” over the repeated protests of our State Department”?

If so, then I would like to suggest that the entire Christian region of the world is one where Catholics and Protestants kill one another (as in Ireland), where people are eager to collaborate with the genocidal crimes like those of the Nazi Holocaust (as in France, Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, etc.), and where everyone holds dear to the crackpot notions of the Christian Identity movement.

By the way, are you aware that the CIA financed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan who is infamous for throwing acid at women dressed in western clothing?

Can I not use your reasoning to suggest that, in so doing, America has shown itself to be a region all of whose residents are equally guilty of that crime and can be characterized as supporting that sort of behavior?

Senator Syverson has told us that he supports trade with countries that enslave their own people; see my posting here:

http://rockrivertimes.com/2011/07/20/guest-column-state-sen-syverson%e2%80%99s-joke-is-on-us/#comment-3134

Isn’t that reason enough to conclude that Syverson suffers NOT from what you call “bad judgment” but rather from willful ignorance of foreign cultures and/or callous indifference to abuses of human rights when doing otherwise would interfere with satisfaction of his profit motives?

You accuse those of us who criticize Syverson of “petulant and almost adolescent rage”.

Well, Mr. Hughes, I would like to suggest that since moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, rage is the appropriate response to bigotry like that coming from Senator Syverson.

Furthermore, I would suggest that all of us who love liberty and justice for all should direct some of our outrage and indignation not only at Syverson and his apologists, such as yourself, but also at all of the politicians of both parties who have turned our country into the whore of Wall Street and the boon companion of tyrants and bullies the world around who, like our own, are eager to find favor with the wealthy, freedom-hating oligarchs who rule there.

We have many other politicians now in office who, like Senator Syverson, seem to have forgotten (or perhaps never learned) that the difference between right and wrong has nothing to do with the difference between profit and loss.

It’s long past time for men and women of conscience to get good and angry about what they have done to our country.

I hope that they are not cowed into silence by the unsound and invalid arguments that you have presented.