Calculated Risk by U.S.

Most of the Letters to the Editor (April 22) that commend President Reagan for his bombing of Libya use the argument that such tactics are an American tradition and have been used successfully in the past. Some compare the Europeans who refused to aid the United States in its bombing of Libya with Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. Many use the argument that the United States went to the aid of the French when they needed it in the second World War. Another went all the way back to Thomas Jefferson and his attack on pirates in proving the success of America’s past tough tactics.

What is not taken into consideration in these arguments is that we now live in a world with nuclear weapons. The thinking of the past won’t work anymore without devastating consequences to ourselves and all other life on Earth.

This is not to say that we must allow injustice to be done. We simply must learn to view another side of an issue with more open-mindedness and from that we can learn a new way of solving our differences. A new way of thinking about conflict must be adopted or we are cooked as a planet.

The current reaction applauding the Libyan bombing doesn’t give one much hope that such a change of thinking is imminent, but one can hope that we will come so close to the brink as a species that we will be able to make the vast evolutionary leap that is necessary. God! I hope so. I am frightened.

VICTORIA E. THOMPSON

Pacific Palisades