Letter to the Editor
To the editor,
A friend of mine recently returned from Europe where his daughter is a U.S. diplomat in Lithuania. Informed by almost 50 years of Soviet occupation and the torture and killing of their leaders by Soviet security agencies like the NKVD and KGB, Lithuanian adults fully expect to be invaded by Russia.
He described the chilling effect of touring the KGB Museum in Vilnius, especially the room where those that entered were never heard from again.
He said his daughter’s personal mission was to get any adult Lithuanian woman to smile at her as she passed, instead of trudging along looking at the ground.
Since 2004 when Lithuania joined NATO, it has highly valued its relationship with the United States. So much so that Lithuanians created a memorial for the four U.S. service members killed there in a training exercise on March 25.
The dedication and vigil at the U.S. embassy and the Vilnius Cathedral were attended by thousands. The somber procession from the morgue to the U.S. Air Force base for repatriation, replete with its candles, flowers, and flags, was befitting of heroes.
Their arrival at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware was not so auspicious. Trump chose instead to attend the LIV Golf Tournament financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund at his Doral golf resort in Florida, the same group having significant business dealings with tournaments sponsored at several Trump-owned courses.
But when our foreign policy decisions reflect the self-interests of one man, there are serious implications for all of us.
As Ukraine uses AI “data-enabled war fighting”, Putin loses seven to ten soldiers for each Ukraine soldier killed, so he has escalated the killing of non-combatants by terrorizing civilian populations.
Trump could end this by removing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of weaponry within Russia and supplying anti-ballistic capabilities suggested by experts in the European and U.S. National Security Councils.
But as a transactional president, concepts like honor, patriotism, humanitarianism, and solidarity with struggling democracies around the world are not in his wheelhouse.
On this Memorial Day weekend, I remember my accomplished aviator cousin training jet fighter pilots, and my civil engineer uncle with the Strategic Air Command flying nuclear weapons over North Africa, and my chaplain grandfather walking over the carnage of the Battle of the Bulge with General Patton.
But I also know how democracies die, and I cannot let myself believe their sacrifices were for nothing.
William Culbert
Oak Ridge
