‘Recklessness in Angola’

Your editorial should have been titled, “Let the Brezhnev Doctrine Prevail.”

What a shameful editorial that ridicules a man (Savimbi) who is trying to pry his country from the awful grip of the Soviet Union. Calling him an enemy of peace because he fights a corrupt dictatorship that has enslaved the people and surrendered the country’s sovereignty to the Soviets and Cubans. You discredit him because he, as a black leader, accepts aid from a white racist government, as if this black man will organize a similar white racist government. What saddens most is the fact that The Times so willingly accepts the legitimacy of a government that owes its life to the Soviet Union, and it so reluctant to support a man who, whatever his past indiscretions, is safely described as pro-Western.

From a strictly human perspective we should support Savimbi because the forced importation of Soviet communism into Angola is morally repugnant.

The larger, rational view should inspire us to slow down and eventually reverse the reality of Soviet imperialism. In Savimbi, the United States has a chance to help free a country and simultaneously move a step closer to freeing the world.

Let us do for Savimbi what the French did for George Washington.

STEPHEN McKEE

Goleta