Proposed Peace Plan for Bosnia

* Your recent editorials on Bosnia, especially “Accepting the Ugly Reality in Bosnia” (Aug. 24), exhibit an alarming and dangerous shortsighted and naive view of a proposed “peace” settlement of the civil war there now being discussed. Your peace-at-any-price view smacks of the 1938 Munich appeasement that sold Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany and led to World War II the following year. Again, a British diplomat (Owen) is calling upon a nation--as Chamberlain did of Czechoslovakia in 1938--to give up territory to achieve “peace in our time.”

A new aggressive and authoritarian state, Serbia, has emerged in Europe and it laughs at the U.N. and U.S. efforts to limit. its policy of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Today Bosnia, tomorrow Kosovo and possibly Macedonia. It is far better to confront the aggression now, when Serbia is weakened, than in future years when like Nazi Germany it will throw its weight around in the powder-keg Balkans.

WILLIAM S. CALDWELL

Laguna Hills

* Re “Perspectives on the Balkan Conflict,” Commentary, Aug. 25:

The moral misery of the conflict in Bosnia is well-represented in the opposing perspectives by the Serbian-American commentators. While one column recoils at the current slaughter and laments the “deafening silence” of the American-Serbian community, the other lobbies for some sympathy and understanding for Serbian hegemony by pointing to some future business opportunities for Americans after the bloodletting is finished.

Two things are clear. One, these ancient animosities are not worth the blood of our youth. Second, when the slaughtering Serbs finish their conquest they should be considered pariahs. They won the war at the expense of losing their national souls.

LELAND P. HAMMERSCHMITT

Ojai

* Re “Why the Serbian American Silence”: One of the most difficult things to do as an American is to confront the dark side of the country of one’s heritage. It’s much easier to extol the virtues of one’s homeland than to condemn its vices. After all, we are not just Americans, we are Serbian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Japanese-Americans, African-Americans, etc. When we condemn the country of our heritage, it reflects on our own personal definition.

I praise George Mitrovich for his courage to confront the atrocities occurring in his ancestral homeland, Serbia.

WILLIAM R. MARVIN

Burbank

* This is in answer to Mitrovich’s article. As one of the Serbians who has not been silent, here is the simple answer: Media blackout on anyone having a favorable opinion on Serbia. The media have taken the road in pursuit of the “almighty petrodollar.”

DONNA MILLICH

North Hollywood