‘Hatchet Victims’

Your title selection, “Hatchet Victims,” accurately painted for me a picture of Reagan’s foreign policy and the state of the world today.

When I was a boy on the farm, my mother would lop the heads off the chickens with an ax. The end result was a body without vision, fluttering around the barnyard, going nowhere fast, but leaving a bloody mess everywhere it had been.

How different the world would be today if Reagan had followed the recommendations suggested by the Presidential Commission on Hunger as he entered office--to make the elimination of hunger and poverty the primary focus of our foreign policy. Instead, we’re now stuck on the farm, with a lame duck, a headless chicken, and a tornado that’s heading our way.

CHUCK WOOLERY

Berkeley