Thursday, September 30, 2021

Friend Ron Marshall's letter-to-the editor June 23, 1984

 

Former allies in the struggle against Nazism

June 23, 1984 | Providence Journal (RI)
Page: A-23 | Section: EDITORIAL
248 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1690, grade level(s): >12

On the 40th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, it is important to remember that the United States and the Soviet Union were once allies in the bloody struggle against Nazism. Cold War propaganda and anti-Soviet hysteria have caused many people to forget this once existing friendship. Under the Reagan administration, relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union have been strained to the point of threatening the world with nuclear annihilation.

Mr. Reagan's deployment in Europe of first-strike nuclear weapons - Cruise and Pershing 2 missiles - has not "made the world a safer place in which to live," as the President boasted recently, but has escalated the arms race, thereby making it a far more dangerous place.

As Sen. Claiborne Pell said recently, "How can we feel more safe and secure when we know the likelihood of our being incinerated has increased, not decreased?"

Mr. Reagan's simple-minded "Evil Empire" drivel, whereby all popular upheavals and any crises in the world are attributed to the Soviet machinations, is used only to justify an insane arms build-up and further U.S. military involvement in Central America, or wherever else the "sacred" profits of the multi-national corporations are jeopardized by an enraged mass of cheap labor.

It is perhaps true that two opposite and antagonistic social systems, such as exist in the U.S. and the USSR, can never really be "friends," but we must try to maintain a rational dialogue that may prevent our causing our mutual destruction.

Ronald F. Marshall

Providence

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