I read a story the other day about how Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered to stop his country’s nuclear proliferation at a price that Kim Jong Il had nary the stones to demand.

In what could only be described as a shocking and logical turn of events, Ahmadinejad just demanded that the United States stop its own nuclear arms development as a precondition for talks regarding a shutdown of Iran’s own nuclear weapons program.

Tony Snow, press secretary for the Bush administration, summed up the sentiment in the White House by saying, ‘Do you believe that’s a serious offer?’ The answer is that no one really knows.

I’ll be the first person to acknowledge that Ahmadinejad is a dangerous, holocaust-denying ideologue presiding over the most volatile country in the world’s most volatile region. All of these facts certainly hurt his credibility beyond repair and force us to call into question the legitimacy of his proposal.

But, in being so quick to dismiss the Iranian president’s seemingly fair offer, Mr. Snow reaffirmed the widely held view throughout the world that America believes it exists on a higher moral plane than everyone else when it comes to nuclear weapons and should not be subjected to the same set of laws as the other members of the global community.

The position of the U.S. government is wrong in this situation, and our outright refusal to hold ourselves to the same nuclear standards as the rest of the world is no longer acceptable and continues to become a greater threat to our national security with each passing day.

Now, I’m not saying that Iran is to be trusted to follow through on any promises to go along with a binding global policy of non-proliferation. They’d have to be closely monitored by U.N. weapons inspectors, resulting in a full disclosure of every aspect of their nuclear program to the rest of the world, no questions asked. And even then I would want further proof of compliance.

However, by failing to bring Iran to the negotiating table, we’re backing ourselves into a dangerous corner where our only option for dealing with a nuclear Iran will become another illegal invasion that our country and military can ill afford.

The Bush administration has spent the entirety of their time in the White House enacting a unilateral foreign policy that has isolated itself from Europe and the rest of the world and is continuing down this road regarding Iran. Agreeing to meet the Iranians in the middle would finally signal to the rest of the world community that we are ready to abandon our lone ranger approach to diplomacy and begin to work with the rest of the world to secure the future.

At a time when, throughout the world, America is about as popular as iPods in Amish country, taking a lead on this issue can do nothing but raise our popularity with the majority of the world not currently living in countries with nuclear capabilities. There is no threat to American security in halting our production of these new, more powerful and precise nuclear weapons. People still know the kind of nuclear can of whoop-ass we can still open up from our existing arsenal, just in case anyone tries to, in the words of legendary hip-hop artist DMX, ‘act a fool, up in here.’

So let’s take the lead on this one, Uncle Sam. Let’s take the first step toward ending the threat of nuclear war with Iran and give those goddamn hippies one less thing to complain about.

‘ Jonathan Schwartz is a junior economics major, who simply refuses to negotiate the status of DMX as a legendary hip-hop artist.