Letters to the Editor

Don’t scale back VOA broadcasts

Helle Dale’s excellent piece “Spreading the word” (Op-Ed, Wednesday) on the planned closure of a number of Voice of America radio programs emphasizes the significance of the VOA English-language shows. But the loss of the broadcasts in other languages might be as damaging.

I work for the VOA Russian service, so let me say a few words about it, but I speak only for myself — not for the agency. Our influence in Russia has diminished in the last decade, mostly due to the shrinkage of our presence on the air (from 18 hours a day in the 1970s and 1980s to three hours now); however, we still have about 3 million listeners daily. Last Friday, I hosted our talk show and was overwhelmed with calls from listeners who were shocked with the news that the VOA Russian radio would disappear after 60 years in existence. They could not comprehend that the enlargement of the Iranian service requires such a sacrifice.

Iran regularly broadcasts anti-American propaganda to Russia on a large scale. For this reason alone we cannot retreat from such a huge battlefield of ideas, leaving it to Iran and to other destructive forces. China, North Korea and other foreign broadcasters are very active in Russia as well, and the mainstream Russian media is mostly against America and democracy.

SEMYON REZNIK

Springfield

Selling out on homeland security

Congress is in an uproar over the sale of six U.S. ports to a firm owned by the United Arab Emirates because many patriotic Americans are voicing their concern that our homeland security is being jeopardized (“Uproar over U.S. ports,” Editorial, Friday).

Unfortunately, this sellout of our sovereignty and national security appears to be business as usual for the Bush administration, since it routinely allows big money interests to trump national security. For example, more than four years after September 11, our borders still remain wide open in order to provide cheap labor for business. In addition, to appease big corporations, President Bush advocates outsourcing our manufacturing and technology to China, which enables this ominous threat to expand and modernize its long-range nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, much (though not all) of the conservative media still portray Mr. Bush as a tough commander in chief who is protecting America, even though many of his economic policies clearly undermine national security.

Now super-liberal Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both New York Democrats, have thrown a right hook at Mr. Bush by correctly coming out against the port sale, thus shrewdly positioning themselves as homeland-security hawks. The conservative media needs to stop the partisan spin and sound the alarm when Mr. Bush and the Republican Party betray America to appease big corporate donors, or the Republican Party will continue to sell out our national security and could lose big in 2006 and 2008 as fed-up conservatives stay home or vote for a third party.

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