Vaclav Havel
Alexander Cockburn’s July 27 Column Left, “A Blowhard Behind the Hero’s Mask,” is a disingenuous attack on Vaclav Havel’s tenure as president of the short-lived Czech and Slovak federal republic. Cockburn has castigated Havel for failing to be perfect and politically correct.
If one considers that Havel was an individual who had never known what it means to live in a democratic society, let alone participate in a democratic political process, and was thrust into the leadership of a nation that has only the barest remnants of a republican tradition and faced immense social problems, it is clear that his presidency was a successful one. His tenure was far from perfect and disappointing compared to the West’s high hopes, but it was not “inglorious.”
Havel may have been “impatient of criticism,” but he was not a dictator, nor did he attempt to accumulate immense power to his office.
ERNEST D. MILLER JR.
Chula Vista
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