Editor:
In Bernard McGrath’s “rebuttal” (Coast Reporter, April 11) to John Gleeson’s column regarding the Ukraine, he refers to some significant events of the past, but also overlooks some other significant events, one of them being that Russia was largely responsible for the defeat of Hitler in the war of which Mr. McGrath is a veteran.
By the time the Americans entered the war, the Russians were engaging 80 per cent of the German troops and had driven them out of Russia, while losing over 20 million people in the process. And not well known is the fact that, despite Russia siding with the Allies in the First World War, by the time the war ended, 12,000 American troops occupied Russia for about two years.
As Mr. McGrath pointed out, Russia did some nasty things during the Second World War, but so did everybody else, including the Americans.
War is not a dinner party.
When Mr. McGrath asks whose side Gleeson is on, I think he needs to listen to Bob Dylan’s song, With God On Our Side, to get some idea of how useful this question is. And what does Mr. McGrath really understand about what’s going on? The in-depth analysis offered on the democracynow website (see, for example, www.democracynow.org/2014/4/17/we_are_not_beginning_a_new) offers quite a contrast to the bellicose (and revoltingly hypocritical) propaganda being espoused by U.S. President Obama and his trusty lackeys.
Consider the long history of violent U.S. involvement in the internal affairs of other countries, specializing in the destabilization or destruction of governments placing their people’s priorities over those of U.S. business interests.
In any case, unless Mr. McGrath served his entire tour of duty in the Second World War as a desk clerk, it’s rather surprising that he would regard risking another world war as a sensible solution to the current crisis, which everyone seems to have forgotten was triggered not by Russia, but by the European Union.
George Kosinski, Gibsons
