LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Let's remember Ronald Reagan for all of his shameful acts

3/8/98

In 1986 two engineers worked in Nicaragua to make a positive difference. Both were born in the late 1950s, came from a humanist Jewish background and both were known for using unicycling to entertain people.

One of them is writing this letter. The other is dead. Murdered in cold blood in 1987 by Reagan's Contras while he worked on a small hydropower generator for rural electrification. His name was Benjamin Linder and he was targeted for assassination by Reagan's people for trying to bring light to the poor.

If we must have our national airport named after Reagan, let it stand as a reminder of the shame he brought: war in Central America. The death of the Marines in Lebanon. Giving weapons to our enemies in Iran. Tax giveaways to the wealthy. The rise of homelessness in America. The United States as an international debtor nation for the first time - he invaded Grenada that same week. The explosion of domestic debt engineered as a way to kill domestic programs including education and scientific research. He said, "It is not the business of government to subsidize idle curiosity."

Remember the man who dismantled successful international family planning programs. The man who brought us James Watt and the destruction of environmental protections. The man who supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa. The man who told the Israeli Prime Minister that he was part of a special film crew at the liberation of the concentration camps - when in fact he had never left Hollywood during the war. That was a fabrication invented to cover up his visit to the Nazi cemetery at Bitburg.

This is after all the man who told us that ketchup is a vegetable to cut school lunch funding. He informed us that trees were the real source of air pollution and that trains were no more energy efficient than cars. Not out of stupidity, but as a way to cut funds for pollution controls and alternative transportation. Truth and reality was all a game to him.

We have named our national airport after the man who fired the hard-working air traffic controllers at all of the nation's airports as his first act of war against the rights of working people to organize for decent wages and working conditions.

And what of his obsession with the "evil empire"? That empire now consists of a collection of nuclear-armed states ruled by organized crime, fear, despair, greed and hatred . . . a perfect recipe for further earth-shattering violence.

Let us remember Reagan. Remember him for every shameful act he brought upon the world and its people.

Robert Bernstein

Goleta