War in Bosnia

* Charles A. Kupchan’s recommendations for graduated escalation in Bosnia make sense (“Reckoning Time in Bosnia,” Opinion, June 4). They don’t put U.S. troops on the ground but they do punish the Serbs. The way he frames the issue makes it less likely his recommendations will be carried out. He says, “The downing of a U.S. aircraft forces the Clinton Administration to take a stand on whether Americans should be prepared to die for Bosnia.”

Dying for Bosnia isn’t the issue at all. Dying for the rule of law is. It’s against the law of every civilized nation to take up arms against one’s neighbor and deprive him/her of life and land. It’s also against international law.

If the “civilized” nations of the West had stopped Hitler the minute he broke the law and invaded Czechoslovakia, millions and millions of lives (many of them American) would have been saved. If NATO had stopped the Serbs the minute they took up arms against Croatia, tens of thousands of lives would by now have been saved.

ANN ALPER

Pacific Palisades

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* I was heartened to learn from Christopher Layne’s commentary on Bosnia (June 2) that the Serbs are not engaged in genocide but only in “compellence,” and that this is now acceptable, since the line between combatants and civilians was erased long ago. I understand the Nazis engaged in a little compellence of their own in World War II, which was, when you think about it rationally and without emotion, not appreciably different from the Allied bombing of Axis cities.

Knowing that the Bosnian Muslims are only being compelled, we can avoid the trap of shaping our foreign policy by outrage. After all, only those who cannot see this conflict in a rational, scholarly light would suggest the silly notion that morality should play a part in organized dealings between human beings.

HOWARD S. BLUM

Agoura

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* Layne urges Western leaders to pressure the Bosnian government until it “resigns itself to the fact that the Bosnian Serbs have won.” Only this way, Layne claims, can peace be achieved.

Unfortunately, Layne’s anti-Bosnia bias has blinded him to the most important point of all: The Bosnian government signed the international community’s “Contact Group” peace proposal last year, yet the Serbs still refuse to do so. Though the plan partitions Bosnia and rewards Serbian aggression, Serbs have instead chosen to continue bombing and shelling helpless civilians and refugees cowering in the so-called “safe havens.” Layne’s recommendation to isolate the Bosnian government will accomplish nothing other than to embolden the Serbs even further.

IVAN MILANOVIC

San Diego

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* When elected, President Clinton promised to “lift and strike,” i.e., allow the Bosnians to receive weaponry to defend themselves against brutal, medieval Serb aggression and to use U.S. high-tech planes to bomb Serb military weapons, munitions, bridges, and command-control with precision smart bombs.

Three years of Serbian lies plus U.N.-NATO and Clinton waffling and policy reversals are intolerable. The implementation of “lift and strike” would be morally and militarily sound. I don’t much care for Clinton, but when he’s right, he’s right. In this case, Bob Dole is wrong!

DEVON SHOWLEY

Cypress

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* Re “NATO Jets Bomb Serb Arms Depot,” May 26: On May 25 I was painfully reminded of yet another senseless air attack against the Serbian civilian population by the U.S. Air Force. On April 14, 1944, on Christian-Orthodox Easter Sunday, Serbian “allies” dropped “Easter eggs” on Belgrade (12,000 killed) and many other Serbian towns, occupied at that time by Nazi Germany. Fifty-one years later, NATO air forces (predominantly U.S. warplanes, F-16s and F-18s) bombed Serbian civilian targets in Pale, near Sarajevo. On the next day, on May 26, they dropped another load of nine bombs, hitting a hospital, school and several apartment houses, killing four people (two children) and wounding 17.

This cowardly attack on civilians, without a declaration of war, is disgraceful and shameful for the only superpower in the world. As a result of this grossly miscalculated and unjustified decision by NATO’s strategists, the whole U.N. peacekeeping mission in former Yugoslavia is put in a clearly untenable position. The UNPROFOR is forced, against the basic principles of its deployment, to take sides and fight against the Serbs, thus becoming an enemy on hostile territory, with their soldiers treated as hostages and POWs. Impervious to all Bosnian offensives, cease-fire violations and staged hoaxes, and turning a blind eye even to the major aggressions, provided that they are carried out against the Serbs (like the Croatian onslaught of the enclave in Western Slavonia on May 1), it probably deserves this fate.

ALEXANDER YAHONTOV

Serbian-American Community Relations Coalition, Los Angeles