Iran: Senator Hagel Counsels President Bush (or at least tries)

Lionel Beehner gives me yet another reason to think there is at least one Republican Senator with both sanity and spine:

Yet the letter comes amid renewed calls by some, including former national security adviser Samuel Berger and Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), to reengage directly with Iran’s government to defuse the crisis by diplomatic means. “The continued unwillingness of the U.S. to engage Iran will make other [UN Security Council] states hesitate to support, and possibly oppose” stricter actions like sanctions, Hagel wrote in the Financial Times.

(Link here).

Alas, the main reason for Lionel’s post has to do with President Bush ignoring President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter for a diplomatic resolution to our differences. As Maggie Farley and Paul Richter note:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent an unexpected letter to President Bush on Monday, in what was seen as an overture for direct talks about Tehran’s nuclear program, but U.S. officials dismissed the missive as an eleventh-hour ploy to forestall punitive action by the United Nations … Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Associated Press that the letter did not contain serious proposals on the disputed nuclear program, but covered history, philosophy and religion over 17 or 18 pages.

A ploy? Get ready folks – the neocons running our military seem to want a war with Iran. After all, Karl Rove has to do something to win the 2006 elections. I just hope the grownups in the GOP join Senator Hagel in speaking out.