Letters to the editor

Reagan’s legacy one of suffering

As a person ready to enter the real world after having been in this
fantasy world called UCLA for three years, I take the death of
former President Reagan as a lesson in social amnesia.

Am I the only one that is upset that the man with a less than
perfect past is being eulogized as a beacon for democracy?

I understand that compassion for his loved ones still alive is
in order, but let’s not overlook some of the brutal facts of
his life: He fired 11,000 air traffic controllers, financed
reactionary forces that murdered thousands and thousands of women
and children in Nicaragua and El Salvador, bombed Libya in 1986,
sent the Marines to invade Lebanon, and armed the same Afghans that
are now killing our own soldiers.

He ordered the National Guard to suppress protesting students at
Berkeley, and at least one death was reported during the
protests.

Personally, I think that all men who aspire to be world leaders
should also recognize that with this responsibility will come
decisions that can lead to horrible massacres and brutal murders,
as was the case with Reagan.

We cannot ignore this.

The lesson I take is that if the numbers of lives perceived to
have been improved surpasses the number of lives that have really
been terminated, then the actions are just. Right? Wrong! Maybe I
am a dreamer, or maybe I truly take it to heart that, as a good
American, my happiness must not be at the expense of the suffering
of others.

Leonard Melchor Graduate student, Latin American
Studies

President improved United States

I am appalled at the Daily Bruin’s editorial “U.S. can
learn from bad, good of presidency” (June 7) disparaging
President Reagan’s legacy. The editorial did not report on
Reagan’s most important achievements but instead focused on
fictitious failures.

On this national week of mourning, the title of The
Bruin’s editorial implies it will review the positive and
negative influences of Reagan. Instead, your paper distorts the
facts.

To make a mockery of Reagan’s “Strategic Defense
Initiative,” which led to the fall of the Soviet Union, is
unfair. The Daily Bruin calls the program “Star Wars”
““ a term used by critics used to undermine his foreign
policy.

The Daily Bruin also fails to fully acknowledge that Reagan
ended the Cold War through massive defense spending, which the
Soviet Union was unable to match. Even former Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev gives Reagan credit for this.

The Daily Bruin also ignores that Reagan tax cut policies helped
lead to one of the largest economic expansions in history and
helped create 17 million new jobs. When the Daily Bruin fails to
acknowledge history, the paper shows how partisan it really
is.

Daniel Gordon Fourth-year, communication
studies

Pfohl wrong about Spanish influence

Jerry Pfohl’s column, “ACLU’s county seal
complaint absurd” (June 7), reflects the enormous
shortcomings of Californian public education and the insensitivity
of mainstream culture. He displays a staggering amount of ignorance
in regards to his retelling of early American Indian life and
Spanish conquest.

The idea that the Spanish “modernized” American
Indian life is completely Eurocentric. It further perpetuates the
idea that American Indians were uncivilized savages before Spanish
contact.

Rather, in their new modernized world, the American Indians were
no longer autonomous or prosperous. Instead, the Spanish
modernization reduced the American Indians’ lives to marginal
existence and poverty.

Indeed, the Spanish did educate the American Indians in
“contemporary farming techniques.” Their education came
in the form of enslavement — as they were forced to toil in the
fields and build monuments to a God who had only brought them
suffering and dehumanization.

While Pfohl is willing to celebrate the Spanish destruction of
American Indian culture, I am not.

I celebrate the American Civil Liberties Union’s demanding
that official governmental symbols must not support the delusions
from which people like Pfohl are suffering.

Tony Abate Third-year, anthropology