Letter: Attack on former president a disgrace to journalism

Monday, July 27, 1998 | 9:40 a.m.

I can't believe that the snot-nosed columnist Halton Adler Mann (July 8) had the temerity to viciously excoriate President Ronald Reagan's tenure in office. We are all human, we all make mistakes, and we pay for them. But Reagan faced a daunting period of the U.S.'s history with courage and daring. And it worked. The Russians backed off their threats of world immolation because he held the big stick and publicly stated he would wield it to protect an emerging Europe.

But I guess it's fair game to castigate a president -- long after leaving office and in Reagan's case, his illness leaving him unable to defend himself. But the bitter and scathing column Mann wrote was a disgrace to the profession of journalism.

As president, Reagan faced the Russians' threat and made them back down. I was in Berlin at the time with American Special Forces and we never knew when the crap would hit the fan. We slept with our weapons -- never knowing if the following morning we would still be alive. What makes Mann a political expert? And what gives him the right to denigrate one of our best presidents; the who stood in front of Russia and said "no mas."

It is easy for the scriveners of today to denigrate our former leaders -- especially in Reagan's case, where Alzheimer's has crippled him and he can't respond. It is easy to sit in retrospect and pass judgment on decisions made under duress. Reagan did what had to be done. The Russians are no longer in Berlin, the people are free and prospering. Europe is free. Russia is crumbling under its own ineptness. And a large measure of a free Europe was Reagan's resolve and diplomacy.

So when this scurrilous scrivener who has probably never experienced the world deems himself an expert on national affairs and proscribes Reagan's actions, I am aghast. He did what he had to do and the world is a better place for it.

Alfred C. Friend