Regarding the Sept. 6 front-page article “U.S. says it hit three Iranian oil tankers”:
On Friday, when asked about the war in Iran, President Donald Trump replied with the following statement: “I call it a military conflict, because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.”
Small potatoes? Not a big thing? Eighteen service members have lost their lives in the war, and more than 750 have been wounded. The war has cost taxpayers more than $37.5 billion. And there has been a significant depletion in U.S. armament, including vital air defense systems and other weaponry.
To better understand how the employment of the military is a solemn and grave matter, Trump should do some reading. Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” in its opening lines, warns that war is “of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.” The Weinberger Doctrine and the Powell Doctrine, by Caspar Weinberger and Colin Powell, respectively, each warned about the use of combat forces. They argued that our nation and leaders would look to the military as a last resort only after all other levers of national power had been tried.
No president should ever refer to the use of our military in combat operations as “small potatoes.” To do so demonstrates their callous disregard for our national security and our men and women in uniform.
William Jessup, Honolulu
The writer is a retired U.S. marshal.
What a battle-ready Navy requires
Adm. Daryl Caudle’s Sept. 3 op-ed, “Naval warfare is changing. Sailors need these weapons,” made a genuinely useful case for naval lasers. But the U.S. Navy faces a much larger problem than its maritime weapons: It does not have enough ships.
Today, the fleet has only 291 ships. Caudle said last month that the Navy needs even more than the previously projected need of 387 ships and is considering a fifth public shipyard.
Caudle said in May that “the Navy’s current force structure is not sufficient in size or design composition” to provide the combat mass required to prevail in high-end maritime conflict. He also identified serious shortfalls in readiness, maintenance, shipyard capacity, infrastructure and sealift. But the same testimony assured Congress that the Navy remains “forward, lethal and ready” and able to “fight and win decisively at sea.”
Caudle acknowledged serious deficiencies but did not explain what they mean for the nation’s ability to prevail in a major war. Without that explanation, Congress cannot make informed decisions, and Americans cannot understand the actual risk they are being asked to accept.
Bruce Stubbs, Alexandria
I was impressed with Adm. Daryl Caudle’s explanations of the merits of lasers and directed energy weapons. They have great combat potential and a way to solve what he calls the “growing imbalance between the cost of attacking and the cost of defending.”
In December 1988, I published an article in Naval Institute Proceedings about the merits of laser weapons on surface ships, saying, “With a strong research effort we could have directed-energy weapons on board ships in the mid-to long-term.” That was almost 40 years ago! These challenges of electric power, optics and ship design might just be harder than we think.
Thomas M. Keithly, Fairfax
The writer is a retired captain in the U.S. Navy.
Washington keeps bailing out farmers
President Donald Trump promised farmers independence. Now, his Iran war is making them depend on Washington. Trump has described American farmers as the “backbone of America.” Specifically, he has stated that farmers do “not want handouts” but seek only “a level playing field.”
Yet, farm country is increasingly being kept afloat by enormous federal payments. This should worry everybody. This year, farmers could receive $55 billion in aid from the federal government; that would equal roughly one-third of the nation’s entire farm income, the largest share since 2001, and more than the amount dispersed in 2020 when the covid-19 pandemic shut down the economy.
Prices of urea, the workhorse nitrogen fertilizer used by American farmers, jumped sharply following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to the Iran war. The White House’s response to the crisis has been a reach for the checkbook.
American farmers deserve better than this. Farmers do not control fertilizer prices, commodity prices, wars or tariffs. When Washington creates or worsens an economic shock, refusing to provide farms with relief will simply push even more toward failure.
America’s farmers do not need another redundant speech about independence. They have the right to an economy that can survive without a bailout every time the world changes.
Daniel Tang, McLean
Change this map
The Sept. 6 news article “U.S. was sole objector to a U.N.-backed map that shows Africa true to size” reported that the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution promoting the use of the “Equal Earth” map, which more accurately reflects the proportions and true size of continents and countries than maps that use the Mercator projection.
One of the changes in the new map is that Greenland, whose size was comparable to that of Africa on the Mercator projection, is in reality about 14 times smaller. How can President Donald Trump convince Americans of the benefits of integrating this resource-rich, icy island into the United States, when it appears so insignificant on the new map?
So it is no wonder that only one country voted against the resolution: the U.S.
The U.S. deputy representative to the U.N. apparently did not appreciate his country appearing smaller on the new map, calling the initiative part of a “radical ideological project.” This was surprising to me because Trump’s attention to Lake Ontario in particular in recent weeks has shown he is quite fond of changing maps.
Sylvio Le Blanc, Montreal, Quebec
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