NATO Strategy Against Serbia

Re “Why NATO’s There,” editorial, April 12: The Serbs have called our empty bombing bluff, but raising our ante would be a terrible gamble. Arming the Kosovars means supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army, a terrorist organization that kills both moderate ethnic Albanians and Serbs, with dreams of creating a Greater Albania. Invading Serbia with NATO and U.S. ground troops means a bloody quagmire that could incite even more ethnic wars and carnage.

Our myopic focus on the Serbian tail ignores the Russian dog at our peril. Our futile bombing of Slobodan Milosevic only promotes the implosion of Boris Yeltsin’s “Weimar” democracy and, in its ruins, risks the rise of a Slavic Russian nationalist Hitler. That is an unacceptable risk. We need to claim our moral victory now, stop the bombing and, with a still-democratic Moscow, cut a deal that saves face for all sides before it’s too late. That’s how to support European stability.

HYATT SELIGMAN

Orange

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Your editorial attempted to make it appear that we are bombing Milosevic and the fight is against him and his supporters. We are destroying at least two major parts of Yugoslavia, Kosovo and Belgrade, while we kill and injure untold numbers of Albanians and Serbs in both Kosovo and Belgrade.

You are using personification of the struggle (that you choose to call an attempt at stability) to lure us into believing that we are after one bad guy, while we slaughter innocents.

THEODORE W. HOOKER

La Puente

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The number of refugees in the Balkans is exceeded only by the number of oh-so-wise critics of the administration in the U.S.

ANN ALPER

Pacific Palisades

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For years, I’ve been paying the IRS over a third of my income, a big portion of it going for missiles, bombs and planes. So, what’s this stuff I read about the war in Serbia having cost a billion dollars already? And going up by $1 billion to $3 billion a month? I figured it was all prepaid; an easy-on-the-budget, layaway war.

Aren’t all the guided missiles, smart bombs and fuel already paid for? Our people fighting the war are already on the payroll. No added costs there. Surely, all the war materiel doesn’t cost us taxpayers again when used for the purpose it was bought. When they start buying replacement stuff, then let me know how much more the NATO war is going to cost the U.S.

JOHN M. FRETER

Yucca Valley