Words From Past

In case no one else noticed, President Reagan seems to have again--perhaps unconsciously--dipped into his tinsel-draped past and pulled out, in slightly altered form, what he considers to be an appropriate quotation.

During his speech on April 23 to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the President, referring to the American bombing raid on Libya and to his promise of future retaliation against any groups or nations that support or carry out terrorist acts, proclaimed that “No one can kill Americans and brag about it--no one.”

It is almost certainly no mere coincidence that Reagan’s Hollywood chum, Errol Flynn, voiced strikingly similar sentiments to members of a British regiment in a motion picture released 50 years ago. Before attacking Russian artillery positions and cavalry forces shielding a turbaned despot responsible for a mythical massacre of unarmed British and Indian soldiers together with their wives and children, Flynn exhorted his troops to “Prove to the world that no man can kill women and children and live to boast of it.”

Americans have some cause for anxiety here. The title of the film is “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

LOREN J. OKROI

Huntington Beach