THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GORE

Letters

Gore Vidal's essay "The Last Empire" [November] is the single most powerful analysis of "world power" I have seen in decades. I never believed that the truths described by Vidal would ever appear in a mass-circulation American publication. How many readers will see that it all began with the "near great" President Truman, whose legacy (well described by Vidal) includes destruction of: our Constitution with a "loyalty program," our national conscience with atom bombs, Truman's political party with undeclared war, the world's economies with a Cold War, and populism worldwide with a secret police?

MILTON ARONSON Saint Petersburg Beach, Florida

I RELISHED Gore Vidal's delightful wit and juicy sarcasm in "The Last Empire." I only wish that the essay were, in fact, satire; instead, it was a very penetrating and realistic look at America.

DONALD A. BROWN Fairfax, Virginia

VIDAL SAYS HE HOLDS the West responsible for starting the Cold War because we "betrayed" Stalin, reneging on our agreements on reparations and the handling of German lands.

Never mind that Stalin had already occupied Eastern Europe; that he was personally responsible for more deaths than any other single individual in history; that he had regularly betrayed those closest to him, including his own son, not to mention leaders of other nations; and that under his rule the Soviet Union was unimaginably oppressive. Considering just these well-worn facts, was there anyone less worthy of negotiating with than Stalin? Does it take much interpretative skill to look to Stalin first and the Soviet state second for the cause of the Cold War?

ALAN MORRISON Santa Clara, California

BY ALL MEANS, let us encourage a worldwide system of city-states and ethnic and religious tribalism as a substitute for American-style democracy. After all, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and the Balkans are all much better role models for the peoples of the world to emulate than that terrible old American empire.

TOM BOECHE Nebraska City, Nebraska

YOUR "Portrait of World Power" not only is a superb collection of photographs but contains amazing glimpses of where the world's great wealth is. It also has moments of humor. The pages are great fun!

CHARLOTTE M. CARDON Tucson, Arizona

IN THE PROFILE of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Vanity Fair states that his "hard-line stance" led to terrorism against Israelis in early 1996. But that carnage in Jerusalem, Ashkelon, and Tel Aviv occurred under Labor's conciliatory Prime Minister Shimon Peres, months before Netanyahu's election.

Likewise, the reference to "four days of conflict" that "left 73 Israelis dead" in "fall 1996" is unintelligible. The September opening of a new door to a tourist tunnel in Jerusalem became a pretext for Yasser Arafat to incite riots, claiming the new exit threatened the well-being of Muslim shrines. The charge was manifestly false—the sites are fine—but dozens of Palestinians and Israelis died in the rioting.

While Netanyahu was wrongly blamed for causing bloodshed, Arafat's terrorist career was erased. Instead, Vanity Fair reported his favorite cartoons!

ANDREA LEVIN Executive director CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America Boston, Massachusetts

I AM THE OLDEST of Gerald Levin's five children, one of three from his first marriage, to my mom, Carol. In your bio of my dad, you effectively erased the life of an important member of our family, my brother Jon, by stating that Levin has four children, two from his first marriage. We are all still reeling from the senseless and brutal murder of our beloved brother and son. One of the many "quotes of the day" that Jon wrote on his classroom blackboard for his students seems fitting here: "Death ends life, not relationships."

LAURA R. LEVIN Port Washington, New York

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