Albanian Refugees

Did I hear right? Because of the U.S.-led bombing going on in Kosovo, our secretary of State wants to invite 20,000 refugees to come live in this country. Mind you, this is only temporary.

The secretary proposes to return them when things are squared away. Wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to provide whatever is necessary for these refugees within their own country than to be ferrying them back and forth across the Atlantic--not to mention future welfare, medical and social needs, unemployment help, finding of jobs and unrest at being sent back when that time comes? Still another future group of victims?

This is not to overlook their tragedy, but history tells us that in this region these people have unlimited capacity to commit the most horrible of crimes against each other with no remorse. Is this not a problem for Europe to solve?

ROBERT ARONOFF

South Pasadena

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Slobodan Milosevic’s strategy is painfully clear: We throw missiles at them, they throw refugees at us. This is not going to be a fair fight--we’re going to get clobbered. The logistics and cost (financial, political, moral) will be far greater than the administration anticipated. I agree the U.S. had a moral right to do something, but it’s losing that bugs me--a well-executed, flawed plan will still produce a poor result.

FRED FORSTER

Corona del Mar

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Wonder how different things might have been in Kosovo if the innocent, unarmed civilian victims had our 2nd Amendment?

MARTHA MARVEL

BILL MARVEL

San Pedro

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Walter Russell Mead, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, has perhaps become a little too senior to contribute any useful observations on foreign policy. One must conclude from his April 4 Opinion diatribe that, were he to have controlled NATO action regarding Kosovo, he would simply have stood by, clucking and lamenting the “ethnic cleansing” of close to 2 million Kosovars. “Never again” would forever have rung hollow and gone silent.

GORDON H. MARION

Hacienda Heights

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Strategic bombing of a country has never convinced that country to give up (with the exception of Japan after we used nuclear bombs). Where is our “moral high ground” when we kill innocent people in Belgrade? If we want to address the problem of Kosovo, then we need to be fighting in Kosovo, not bombing Belgrade.

If we don’t have the stomach to fight a ground war (did we declare war?) in Kosovo, then we shouldn’t have started the bombing. This president has not thought through any foreign policy regarding this issue.

JOE ORESKOVICH

Claremont

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Will Milosevic be able to hang on as long as Fidel Castro? And how did we get into this mess? We need some answers soon or have we reached the point of no return?

GENE POLITO

Irvine

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Agonizing through all the constant Balkan turmoil the last decade, I have one thing to ask: Tito, where are you when we need you?

J. KINGSLEY FIFE

Santa Monica