U.S. Role in Philippines

Pedro Chan, acting principal officer of the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles (Letters, Dec. 3), loudly trumpets the Americans who have lived in the Philippines who agree with him, and other supporters of the current regime, that current news reports describing the critical situation there are “full of distortions” and “outright lies.” He, and supposedly they, assert that the situation there “is not any worse than it has been in the last few years.” Well, five years ago I spent two months in the Philippines and still chillingly recall being roused from my hotel because an opponent of the Marcos-and-cronies regime had planted a bomb.

I am a freedom-loving (I have participated in Voice of America broadcasts directed to the people of Vietnam who are subjected to the oppression of communism) and peace-loving man. However, if I were confronted by a corrupt government that continually took my liberty from me, I might also be tempted to plant a bomb or demonstrate rather than speak out openly and clearly, and run the risk of being murdered in the same way that Benigno Aquino was murdered.

JOSEPH D. GOSHA

Glendale