In reply to “‘The Most Dangerous Moment,’ 50 Years Later,” by Noam Chomsky and Tom Engelhardt, 10/16/12:

Chomsky´s article is all well and good but he is looking at the Missile Crisis from today and not from the perspective of the world as it was at that moment. It seems from reading his article that Khrushchev put the missiles in Cuba to right a terrible wrong the West had done by stationing missiles all around him. This certainly was a factor but not the whole picture.

One should not forget that the majority of the Western world did live in fear of Communism. Thanks to the nature of that system, Stalin was able to annihilate more of his citizens than Hitler did in the Holocaust. It is also true that Khrushchev exposed Stalin ´s atrocities and that he was a different leader and it took time for the US to realize this, but can we really forget how the Soviets put down the Hungarian uprising of 1956 or the Polish uprising, or the repressive regimes in Albania and Rumania and even as late as 1968 the Czech Spring or what happened when the Communists took over Cambodia or even the horrors that occurred in China under Mao during the Cultural Revolution?

Another misunderstood point is that it was a serious matter in those days for the allies to be together, especially because of the tension over Berlin, and trading the Turkish missiles openly would certainly have seriously damaged those relations (even if the Turkish missiles were actually obsolete thanks to the Polaris submarines). As it was, due to that secret deal, De Gaulle pulled out of NATO saying France had to take care of its own defenses and could not rely on the US because in a crisis they would defend their own interests over the allies´ interests.

That the US has now become an imperial force thanks to the fall of the USSR is another story. There are many myths about the Missile Crisis but we should not propagate new ones with articles like this. Finally one might point out that the winner in the end is Castro. He is still there.

Jenny Vujacic

In reply to “America’s Longest War Moves Into 12th Year,” by Jason Ditz, 10/07/12:

A 12 year long war means that there are men fighting this war now who were 6 year old boys when the war began.

Cathryn Mataga

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You forget Korea.

Pete Wenk