Terrorism and the Cold War

* Ann Douglas, in her meandering article (“ ‘50s Redux,” Opinion, Aug. 30), seems to be expressing some dissatisfaction with the fact that the United States prevailed in the Cold War. People like Douglas would apparently want us to forget why Russia was an “evil empire.”

During the 1930s Stalin utilized terror and mass murder, as exhibited in the purges of the Communist Party through the so-called Moscow trials. In 1939 he entered into an alliance with Hitler, agreeing to the partition of Poland between Germany and Russia and allowing Stalin to have a free hand in the eastern Baltics so as to gobble up Estonia, Latvia and Finland, countries which Russia shortly thereafter occupied. Hitler’s subsequent double-cross of Stalin ended their alliance. At the end of World War II Russia occupied and controlled various Eastern European countries with their resulting denial of democratic freedoms. The United States, on the other hand, through the Marshall Plan, assisted devastated Europe to rebuild.

Assuming, at the end of World War II, that instead of there being two superpowers, the United States and Russia, there had been only one--which one would have been preferable?

JIM HAGGERTY

Woodland Hills

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* So the war on terrorism is complicated because “Congress scapegoats the tobacco industry while ignoring the criminal behavior of other major corporations.” This war is further complicated, we are told, because “As long as they [Americans] refuse to face the pervasiveness and depth of lying in public life, they will prosecute the amateurs, the small fry of prevarication, while ignoring or rewarding the pros.” If we believe these sweeping assertions, then it looks like the war on terrorism is just too hard and old-fashioned isolationism is the only realistic U.S. option. Should Kenneth Starr look into this problem also and get Douglas to reveal her sources?

SHERMAN MULLIN

Glendale

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* After reading Douglas’ column, I am left with one conclusion: If our government officials (including the president) would place as much zeal in gathering international intelligence as they do political intelligence, there would be no international terrorism.

JANET TAYLOR

Pismo Beach