In desperate need of new leadership

Moscow is the largest city in Europe, once the capital of an immense empire with a history longer than our own, home to a cultural heritage second to none, and to a proud people who have proved capable of extraordinary sacrifice in defense of their country. It also commands the greatest nuclear arsenal in the world. I would not mess with it as we are now doing — more rashly and dangerously than we ever dared to do during the long years of the Cold War.

Nancy Pelosi traveled to

Kiev to proclaim that Ukrainians were defending our freedom. I cannot for the life of me understand what my freedom owes to Ukraine or how Russia threatens it. But I certainly understand how the prospect of war between the United States and Russia threatens my life and everybody else’s.

I am an old man (although not as old as Pelosi) and I think that this country is in desperate need of new leadership. Frankly I wonder if those now in charge are up to the task. After all they are the same generation who led us into a string of losing wars and on whose long watch ever greater numbers of Americans have fallen into poverty, food insecurity, and homelessness. Don’t we have better things to do with $33 billion than to pour arms into an already murderous, wholly unnecessary, and extremely risky war?

— Carl Peterson, Paradise