When Russia gets itself in a bind they beg the U.S.A. for aid as they did in World War II. The U.S.A. supplied Russia with hundreds of navy war ships on the lend lease plan, millions of supplies, but Russia never paid the U.S.A. back.
Now Russia is in a security bind and has begged President Obama to assist them. But, Russia has also denied a U.S. company, Chobani, to send its yogurt to our U.S.A. athletes because they say Chobani has not followed the regulations to export to Russia. Strange but these rules for food do not apply to Olympic participants according to Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya and the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Russia wants to change the rules after the game has started, sound familiar?
Chuck Mehan
East Ridge
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Chuck Mehan conveniently leaves out a few facts in his letter about Russia and WW ll. Certainly FDR made the decision to send military supplies and equipment to Russia during the war under the Land Lease Legislation because he understood the strategic value of Russia engaging Hitler in a second or Eastern Front. Stalin used the equipment and supplies to bleed the Wehrmacht dry after they invaded Russia and consequently as the momentum shifted to the Soviets invade Germany.
By June of 1944 when we invaded the Continent on D-Day Stalin had 5.5 million troops facing 2 million German troops on the Eastern Front. If there had been no Eastern front probably 1.9 million of those German troops would have been standing guard on the beaches of Normandy. General George Marshall was quoted as saying if not for the Eastern Front we would have had to double the number of our troops to invade France. It has been estimated that 80 percent of Germans killed in the war were killed on the Eastern front
So it would appear to me that FDR (the greatest wartime President we ever had) made the correct decision to send equipment and supplies to Stalin in return for the Soviet sacrifices made on the Eastern Front.
Comparing a mix-up on shipping yogurt to the Olympics to the millions of lives lost in WW ll seems somewhat of a stretch to me. Russia had been our greatest enemy since the late 40s but there is no way we can deny the contributions the Soviets made in defeating Hitler in WW ll.
Douglas Jones
Ooltewah