Reagan's Regime One Of The Most Fiendish

[Larkspur]

That's the title of my LTTE in The Day, an Eastern CT newspaper.
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=B32EB9AC-5E04-46B6-8A4B-E8D31796098F

The title doesn't match what I meant in the letter. I had said that Reagon supported one of the most fiendish regimes in the world -- South Africa's apartheid government in the 1980's, but then again Reagan's policies did hurt people in the middle and lower classes here and abroad and his Admin was fiendish to them.

With this title over my letter, I wonder how many angry Republicans will bash me in future letters, especially with my letter being published on the day of Reagan's funeral. But I stand by my letter's content.

Here's my LTTE
In his column about Ronald Reagan, Cal Thomas writes that Mr. Reagan “had seen too many people and governments that would limit human freedom to have anything but the highest regard for individual liberty as a God-given right. (“Ronald Reagan's wonderful life,” June 9.)

But history proves that Reagan championed one of the most fiendish regimes in the world, and I'm not talking about his support of Saddam Hussein.

In December 1984, Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu, said, “...the Reagan administration's support and collaboration with (South Africa's pro-apartheid regime) is equally immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian. . . You are either for or against apartheid and not by rhetoric. . . You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral.”

Mr. Reagan stubbornly refused to use the power of the United States presidency to assist the oppressed black South Africans. He preferred to use his power to try to block Congress from passing stringent sanctions on the white South African government or pass lesser sanctions than what was needed to pressure that tyrannical regime to reform.

Nelson Mandela was freed after unjustly spending nearly 30 years in prison and about a year after Mr. Reagan left office, but freedom for South African blacks wasn't won because of Mr. Reagan's “highest regard for individual liberty as a God-given right” but due to leaders like Bishop Tutu, world pressure and a pragmatic white South African leadership under Frederick Willem De Klerk.