To the Editor,

With that Russian Punk Putin invading the neighboring country of Ukraine, do we really need to reconsider the lack of morality of such leaders like Putin and Hitler? 

Wilfred Owen wrote some of the best British poetry during that “War to end all wars.” He composed nearly all of his poems from August 1917 to September 1918. In November 1918, they killed him at age 25, one week before the Armistice.

“Dulce et Decorum et” is Owens’ WWI time-bottle poem that questions our own morality in allowing Putin and Hitler leader types. After describing the scene before and during a gas attack that kills a soldier, the poem ends with:

“If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: ‘It is sweet, and proper, 

to die for one’s country.”

During his Feb. 22 Fox News show, looking like a constipated parrot, Tucker Carlson said, “It may be worth asking yourself, why do I hate Putin?” That same day on another radio show Trump said, “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful.” 

Republicans either want no government, or at least a Trump dictatorship like Putin’s. Minnesota Republican Representatives 6th District Tom Emmer, 7th District Michelle Fischbach and 8th District Pete Stauber supported Trump in his Jan. 6, 2021 attempt to overthrow our elected government. It failed only by Trump’s lack of “genius.” But Trump suck-ups have since taken away basic rights to vote in key states to give Trump a second chance. 

Any person who supports any of this is an immoral damned fool! 

Erwin R. Rud

Fosston, Minn.