Visit by Iranian president should not drive America to 'draw guns'
Part of Our World
Dan Rather

Having taken in this week's visit to New York by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all that went with it, your reporter is reminded of a story from long ago and far away.

It's the tale of an old gunfighter, a classic white-hat type who only reached for his shooting irons when absolutely necessary. When he did reach, though, you didn't want to be on the business end of his quick and deadly draw.

Such was this gunslinger's fame that hardly a day went by without a challenge from some young gun looking to prove himself. One day, while taking a ferryboat up the Mississippi, he was approached by a particularly obnoxious young man with a couple of six-shooters hanging conspicuously from his belt. This upstart - a classic blackhat type - bragged to our gunfighter that he could take him on. "Go ahead," the man in the black hat said, "draw."

The old gunfighter, accustomed to such taunts, did his best to ignore the troublemaker. But his indifference only enraged the man in the black hat, who began to wave his guns in the air in a show of belligerence that frightened the other passengers on the boat. Seeing this, our hero turned to the young gun and said: "OK, son. If you want a fight, you got one. But there are innocent people on this ferry who don't need to get hurt. Let's just stop off on that island over yonder, and we can settle this between the two of us, man to man."

So they got the ferry pilot to pull up to a small island in the stream. And just as the man in the black hat stepped off the ferry, the man in the white hat signaled to the pilot to get going. The old gunfighter, the pilot and the passengers looked back to see the young gun stranded, alone, on the island, hopping mad over the fight that he had wanted but been denied by the old gunfighter's clever thinking.

Ahmadinejad comes to us like a villain out of central casting, with his bellicose talk toward the United States and Israel and his repugnant Holocaust denial. This week, one and all got their chance to boo and hiss his act, from the New York Daily News with its headline, "The Evil Has Landed," to our U.S. delegation to the United Nations, which left the General Assembly when the Iranian president took the podium.

Those of us who have been around for a while, though, remember that our white-hatted nation has stared down - and bested - foes that, like the Soviet Union, were much more formidable than this one, all while never forgetting to say "Sir" and "Ma'am." And at our nation's best, such was our strength that we did so without having to draw our big guns.

Most of the world is capable of seeing Ahmadinejad for what he is - a petty tyrant with grandiose ambitions, a leader who must seek outside enemies to bolster his shaky status at home.

This view is shared by many in the Middle East, and indeed in Iran itself. Deny him the fight he wants, and it seems common sense that you have a better chance of stranding him, alone, the better to undo himself with his own words. Stoop to answer his taunts, though, as so many of our American institutions did this week, and we grant him the boast that he stood toe-to-toe with the old gunfighter, on his own turf.

The brewing Iranian nuclear crisis is much more than a gunfight, of course, and there are a lot of innocent people on this boat. That's all the more reason to engage Ahmadinejad with our smarts rather than just our emotions.

Dan Rather, a native of Wharton, was the anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years. His column appears by arrangement with King Features Syndicate.