George Will’s Diatribe Against Reagan

Will is grossly unfair to the Administration, whose avid advocate and intellectual guru he has been in the last six years.

The exchange, in addition to the release of Daniloff, secured the release from exile of Orlov, and permission for him and his wife to leave the Soviet Union. Orlov, a man of heroic stature and one of the leaders of the Soviet human rights movement, would undoubtedly have died in exile, but for our role in his release. To exchange this man, and his loyal and courageous wife, for a low-level Soviet intelligence operator was an arrangement that was humane, symbolic, and, yes, politically wise.

It is clear from the rest of the column that Will’s real unhappiness is about the pre-summit meeting of President Reagan and Gorbachev. Will is afraid that at the meeting, the President (once Will’s political idol, now like other Americans “vain and parochial” in his views) is likely to be outsmarted by the clever and cunning Gorbachev.

The reasonable concessions that the Soviets have made and seem to be ready to make to stop the arms race count for nothing in this assessment. Will’s implied choice is to continue the arms race until we achieve military superiority over the Soviet Union.

What will happen to our economy and to us as a people need not be seriously weighed. For at the end of the road likes the mirage of the exhausted Soviet Union standing ready to accept a political settlement that Will and his conservative friends might be willing to approve.

LEO BROMWICH

Van Nuys