French dressing

This just over 15 years after the US referred to the French people at the time of the Iraqi conflict (via writers of The Simpsons), as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.

The intended snub to Britain by this faux expression of alignment – where now that “special relationship”? – was almost too childish to be believable in its direct intention to hurt.

Reference to “the 21st century” is often sweepingly made as if we have a fresh start to make, a new way to look at and respond to things, perhaps. Good thinking, but thus far there is no evidence of this; perhaps even the opposite case is true.

Warring is decidedly 15th century in posture and enactment, while our leaders seek ennoblement through this as Anglo- Saxon heroes of the 7th century. We don’t need this. Luckily, sense seems to prevail in the population, leaving those who fail to read the public appetite – our elected servants – with egg on their faces.

Douglas Hogg

Gordon

Berwickshire

THE US Secretary of State, John Kerry, patrician replacement for Hillary Clinton, obligingly took on the role of official warmonger for a vacillating, legacy-obsessed president Barack Obama. But his thunderous denunciation of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons should be treated with caution in view of his reputation as the Senate’s fulminator-in-chief.

In the past, he scornfully rejected the Kyoto Treaty until president George Bush revealed his own scepticism about global warming, whereupon Kerry excoriated him as a “denier”.

He led the charge against Iraq, citing “incontrovertible” evidence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, but when none were found he again castigated a “naive” George Bush.

For all his high-flown moral outrage, John Kerry has a history of political opportunism and the old rule of thumb applies: “Would you buy a second-hand car from this man?”

Dr John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews, Fife