Winston Churchill’s No Bush Leaguer

I could not help but be struck in reading John Balzar’s reflections on Winston Churchill (“Churchill’s Force of Words Remains Our Finest Hour,” Commentary, Sept. 2) by the total contrast between Churchill and George W. Bush.

As Balzar makes plain, Churchill offered his country a combination of eloquence, wit, vision and doggedness. Taken together, this translated into the leadership that saved Europe from Hitler. President Bush is lacking in all of these qualities, except doggedness. He seeks to compensate for his obvious deficiencies with well-orchestrated presentations of piety and probity.

Where Churchill was an international inspiration, Bush is a national embarrassment.

Len Gardner

Laguna Woods

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I regret having to temper Balzar’s gushy adulation of Churchill. Balzar credits Churchill as “the fellow who held the line for freedom.” It is true that Churchill mobilized Britain to fight Hitler. But his concepts of freedom and democracy were highly selective. For him, democracy was all right in Europe but clearly undesirable in the far-flung British Empire.

He fiercely resisted granting freedom to India and was deceitful with President Roosevelt when the latter pressed him on the subject. He derided Mahatma Gandhi as “that half-naked fakir.” The sad reality is that Churchill was a hypocrite, a racist and an imperialist. Apart from these minor imperfections, I agree with Balzar that he was a wonderful fellow.

Sardul S. Minhas

Anaheim Hills