Quality of leadership is different in this 'war'

President Trump has declared he is a wartime president and this is true. He is a president during a war, a war on the COVID-19 virus. It's easy to see a comparison to the wartime environment of World War II. As it was then, much is asked of the citizenry to support the war effort.

During that war, our country had many excellent field generals, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Patton, Bradley and many more. Today our generals in the field are our governors. In general they're doing a great job. They're making difficult decisions and trying their very best to keep us informed with science based facts. They are being brutally honest with the citizens of their states with regard to the real dangers we are facing and what we must do to defeat the enemy.

Today's soldiers, like the brave young people who volunteered during World War II, are the health care providers, who like those soldiers, are risking their health and lives for the safety of their fellow citizens.

The only real difference between then and now is the leader of the country. During World War II we had Franklin Roosevelt who provided leadership and through his "Fireside Chats" kept the public aware of the state of the war efforts. Even before the country was brought into the war, Roosevelt, while trying to maintain neutrality, still prepared the military for the possibility of war,

Our current president did nothing to prepare us for this war. He ignored the intelligence communities' warnings and for months insisted that we had nothing to be concerned about and everything was under control. Unfortunately here we are today with a president whose war efforts seem to be more directed to insulting reporters, bragging about his accomplishments and giving false hopes of an easy fast cure for the pandemic.

Larry Colwell

Plato Township