From La Vern F. Isely

Monroe

To the editor:

When we elect a new president in the United States, he appoints all of the people that he thinks are going to move in the direction the president wants to go. That is — should we get closer to communist Russia and other communist countries or should we stay very suspicious of them because our FBI and CIA are reporting that communist Russia is spying on us and is trying to interfere in our elections and in other elections around the world? Russia’s system is not very democratic and is very dictatorial, which has led, up to now, to a very poor economy for themselves.

A great example is North Korea, who attacked South Korea on June 25, 1950 and June 27, 1950. U.S. President Harry Truman ordered U.S. air and naval forces to help defend South Korea and on June 30, 1950, he ordered in ground troops. In the meantime, the United Nations were talking this over and decided to get involved and voted 9-0 to do so. The only country of the UN Security Council not voting was Russia because they were boycotting the UN.

At that time, both North and South Korea were very poor because the Japanese had control of Korea in World War II and exploited it badly. After World War II, Russia occupied North Korea and the U.S. occupied South Korea. South Korea elected 200 members of a National Assembly, who drafted a constitution and chose Sygman Rhee as president. Korea was proclaimed the Republic of Korea Aug. 15, 1948. The problem after that, North Korea did not approve of what South Korea was attempting to do and invaded South Korea.

This is why the U.S. didn’t trust communist North Korea then and still doesn’t trust them today, with the exception of Republican President Donald Trump who thinks he can trust their attempts over the many years other presidents have tried to make peace. The problem now is much worse because communist North Korea is trying to make war with the whole world by testing their missiles. The range of their missiles right now can reach our borders in California. Anytime you use nuclear weapons on them, you could be talking about virtually ending the world because North Korea is more unpredictable than communist Russia or communist China.

If you want a democracy to really work, you have to do it by the ballot box.