Cold Warriors

William Schneider’s commentary on President Bush’s State of the Union address (Opinion, Feb. 4) becomes the convoluted, conservative ideology of the American Enterprise Institute, of which he has been associated for many years.

On the front page of the Opinion section we were gleefully treated to both Henry Kissinger’s ramblings about Europe’s future, and Schneider’s own assessment that “Bush can say he is his own man” for promising to plant a billion trees a year to beautify the country.

Does it matter at all to The Times in-house political pundit that Bush has no comprehensive environmental programs for cleaning America’s streams and rivers, and the air we breathe; that Bush does not take seriously regulating business, implementing conservation programs, reducing acid rain and global warming.

But Schneider was at his ideological best when he stated that, “The United States is no longer pre-eminent in power, wealth or leadership. Our values are winning the Cold War, but we have lost our ability to control or even influence major events in the world.” The Cold Warriors can never give credit to Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and political reforms for a thawing of East-West tensions. To them, it will always be the capitalist model that brought down communist repression.

But, to say that the U.S. no longer influences and controls events in the world, with the recent events in Panama, is simply to pardon the excesses of the American empire with events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Bloc.

NEIL C. McKINLAY

Lancaster