Politics in Perspective

It is astonishing to read, in this day and age, “Dancing With the Dictator” (Opinion, Jan. 4), wherein Stanley Meisler chides Dwight D. Eisenhower for signing a pact with Franco’s Spain. Has Meisler heard of politics making strange bedfellows? Does he have an opinion on FDR’s embrace of Josef Stalin? Meisler should perhaps consider that communist dictators came first; anti-communist dictators came second.

We would not have the latter if not for the former. Without Franco, Spain might well have become another communist hellhole along the lines of North Korea. But I suspect that Meisler’s leftist politics leave little room for reflection or historical fact.

Peter Hof

Palm Springs