REPUBLICAN Senator Corker considers the “US on course for World War III with Trump at the helm.” (Dawn, Oct 9). I listened in stunned disbelief as the ‘Big Rocket Man’ essentially launched that ‘war’ during his vitriolic rant at the UN General Assembly.

For saying far less, people have been branded terrorists and prosecuted. Had any Afro-Asian leader made similar statements their countries would summarily have been bombed into the Stone Age. Yet, in the presence of the representatives of 192 nations in the one remaining institution desperately pretending to attain world peace, Mr Trump’s tirade earned no censure other than the ‘dotard’ riposte!

North Korea and Iran may not be loveable states but they have never overtly attacked the US. Saudi Arabia is possibly the world’s biggest recipient of US WMD’s (over $110 billion) and for years has exported Salafist fundamentalism across the world, tearing the ummah’s entire fabric apart.

The Koreans have called Mr Trump “mentally deranged.” His own Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson said a few unkind words about him and now Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Corker adds: “the president had not yet been able to demonstrate, the stability, nor some of the competence, that he needs to demonstrate.”

One thing is eerily clear. Continued irresponsible and provocative outbursts are very likely to blow up into a conflagration that may not be containable. In the interests of the American people and for the safety of the world, the US needs to muzzle its biggest WMD and his hawks before Armageddon happens.

Dr Mervyn Hosein
Karachi

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2017