The US president is making the mistakes his early predecessor made
06 July 2023 - 19:27
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As commander-in-chief Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi has acknowledged, much of the tanks and other equipment supplied by the US, UK and Germany have been obsolete models, and inferior to Russian weapons. Ukraine now faces the reality of surrender to whatever terms Russia imposes.
Cunningham is wrong, however, in believing that Harry S Truman agonised over dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, Truman was so “cock-a-hoop” about his newly acquired presidential status that he threatened to drop nuclear bombs on 20 Russian cities.
So began the Cold War, and the US has since squandered trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons. Russia has repeatedly declared that it will only use its nuclear weapons as a last resort, and/or in retaliation after a US nuclear strike.
By contrast, some of Biden’s warmongering advisers in Washington recklessly believe the US can win a “tactical” nuclear war even at the cost of the destruction of the planet Earth.
President John F Kennedy in June 1963 attempted to end the Cold War. He was assassinated five months later by what president Eisenhower in 1961 had described as the military-industrial complex. Six decades later, Biden deludes himself that he can emulate Truman.
Instead of an end to the Cold War and the peace that Kennedy sought, the US has inflicted its war obsessions on the world. Yet despite its much-vaunted weaponry, the US has lost every war since Vietnam. Having learnt nothing from defeat by the Taliban in Afghanistan only two years ago, Biden and the US war business face further humiliation in Ukraine.
The consequences will include the collapse of both Nato and the role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Hopefully, a new era of peace and prosperity will follow.
Terry Crawford-Browne Via email
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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LETTER: Biden as cock-a-hoop as Truman
The US president is making the mistakes his early predecessor made
James Cunningham (“Seven decades after Hiroshima, Biden is in a similar bind”, July 4) correctly writes that Nato’s proxy war in Ukraine is not going well. Ukraine is running out of both soldiers and ammunition.
As commander-in-chief Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi has acknowledged, much of the tanks and other equipment supplied by the US, UK and Germany have been obsolete models, and inferior to Russian weapons. Ukraine now faces the reality of surrender to whatever terms Russia imposes.
Cunningham is wrong, however, in believing that Harry S Truman agonised over dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, Truman was so “cock-a-hoop” about his newly acquired presidential status that he threatened to drop nuclear bombs on 20 Russian cities.
So began the Cold War, and the US has since squandered trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons. Russia has repeatedly declared that it will only use its nuclear weapons as a last resort, and/or in retaliation after a US nuclear strike.
By contrast, some of Biden’s warmongering advisers in Washington recklessly believe the US can win a “tactical” nuclear war even at the cost of the destruction of the planet Earth.
President John F Kennedy in June 1963 attempted to end the Cold War. He was assassinated five months later by what president Eisenhower in 1961 had described as the military-industrial complex. Six decades later, Biden deludes himself that he can emulate Truman.
Instead of an end to the Cold War and the peace that Kennedy sought, the US has inflicted its war obsessions on the world. Yet despite its much-vaunted weaponry, the US has lost every war since Vietnam. Having learnt nothing from defeat by the Taliban in Afghanistan only two years ago, Biden and the US war business face further humiliation in Ukraine.
The consequences will include the collapse of both Nato and the role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Hopefully, a new era of peace and prosperity will follow.
Terry Crawford-Browne
Via email
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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