U.S. must stop meddling in affairs of Russia and Georgia

U.S. must stop meddling in affairs of Russia and Georgia

EDITOR:

As one who has participated in a number of grass-roots efforts to assist Russia rise up from a recent time of troubles, I am amazed at how we as a country are squandering our new-found partnership and turning it into a new adversarial stance ready to encircle Russia militarily and politically.

Hard-fought gains of the past 25 years to bring Russia to the table of civilized nations are now being sacrificed on the altar of the American belief that it can dictate the code of good behavior for the rest of the world. I ask you how we would react if Russia funded the separatist movement in Quebec in an attempt to destabilize our northern neighbor? Interference in our area, we would cry foul!

What about an advanced missile base in Greenland? Watch out Russial; you’re breathing down our necks. Even defensive radar screen on eastern Sakalin Island or the Kamchatka Peninsula opposite Alaska might provoke a new Cuban-missile-crisis mentality and move us another step closer to war.

I don’t see Russia doing these things, but we sure are supported by the color revolutions (orange in Ukraine, rose in Georgia, velvet in Czechoslovakia) via NGOs and humanitarian organizations, whose own credibility is now at stake. We do this so all the former U.S.S.R. republics bordering eastern Europe will eventually join NATO, further isolating (and threatening) Russia as it clearly would do us if we were in their shoes.

After assuring the Russians in 1991 that NATO would not expand to incorporate these republics, we now see the absorption of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, not to mention Poland and Romania, and the plans for Georgia and Ukraine are clear. How much hypocrisy can we expect them to stomach? Can we get past the Cold War, please?

What’s that? We’ve been training the Georgian army, the one that went into contested South Ossetia.

Since the fall of the Soviet empire 17 years ago, there was a brief period that followed a 200-year history of Georgia being an independent region within Russia. Does it matter that the majority Ossetians in Georgia’s South Ossetia have already expressed their desire to join their ethnic relatives in North Ossetia in Russia? Or do we just accept those expressions of democracy that agree with our preconceived notions of the new American world order? Do we really have the right to impose our solutions without consultation?

And what makes it our business in the first place? This is Russia’s neighborhood. Where is our sense of parity when we can freely interfere with others, but let ’em try to mess with us. Time to back off, Jack.

HOWARD METEE

Boardman

Save Hubbard’s supermarket

EDITOR:

I commend the people of Hubbard, as well as its city administration, for supporting the Hubbard Nemenz IGA. Hopefully your support is not “too little, too late.”

It’s important to our local economy that we support independent business owners, particularly those like Henry Nemenz who contribute so much to the community. I’m sure the union pickets are nice people, but we should keep in mind that they have no interest whatsoever in the businesses they are picketing and are paid by the union to do one thing: carry a sign.

That a picket sign can dissuade people from shopping at a store they would otherwise patronize is indeed unfortunate.

JOHN ZEDAKER

Poland