Intervention in Bosnia

“Wishing for a War Without Blood” (Dec. 13) caught me off guard. As a person in my 20s, I was initially offended by the insinuation that, as a group, we cannot handle the fact of war. But as I read further I had to admit that the assessment of the overall American view toward war is correct. Most of my friends hate the concept of war, but accept that America is the “world’s police.” They expect a low casualty rate.

Maybe this is as it should be. Perhaps that is the new threshold for entering a conflict. That we can get in, do what is prudent, and then get out with few deaths and casualties. Maybe that is modern war. The days of drafting and troops storming beaches like my dad did had better be over, or else, like the former Soviet Union, we’ve poorly spent our money, what with drones that “self-fly,” the new chemical lasers, etc. We should expect a low casualty rate. For $243 billion you had better get it right.

ADAM PASKOWITZ

Los Angeles

Once again the United States is about to plunge into another Vietnam. Before we make the same mistake twice it is important to make several things clear. First of all, our national interest is not involved in Bosnia. Bosnia is isolated, has no strategic resources, and it does not straddle or control international trade routes. Second, we are getting involved in a foreign civil war, as in Vietnam; we are not stemming any kind of international aggression. Third, America cannot afford to become the world’s policeman.

Conflicts of this sort and international security cannot and should not be dealt with by one power like the United States or by a combination of powers like NATO. This kind of problem can only be handled by the United Nations. And the only way the United Nations can deal with the problem of international peace and security is through a U.N. army, navy and air force with U.N. uniforms and a U.N. command structure. Only by getting away from the nation-state concept can we have real world peace. Whether we like it or not, world peace requires a world government. The world is at the stage where the United States was when we were operating under the Articles of Confederation.

We must not militarily intervene in Bosnia. It will only lead to disaster. We also must start thinking about international alternatives to NATO and other military alliances.

JERRY L. VOORHIS

Claremont

Thanks to your Dec. 13 Commentary page (“Don’t Send Troops; Instead, Send Arms”), we have now heard from the least knowledgeable source in Washington. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) is a sad example of the Senate seniority system. What he knows about foreign relations could be written on the head of a pin.

Helms never once referred to the fact that U.S. peacekeeping efforts are part of an international campaign to stop the fighting. Helms and Sen. Bob Dole are dead wrong when they tout a solution based on arms shipments that would add gasoline to an already raging fire.

ROBERT J. BRUN

Redlands

I have felt for a long time now that the U.S. should be involved militarily in Bosnia. Once we created “safe havens,” we were morally obligated to make them both safe and havens. To our shame, we did neither. Now we are finally deploying to Bosnia, but for all the wrong reasons.

We have crawled into bed with a regime that has used genocide, rape and all-around brutality as tactical and strategic weapons in a war of aggression. We have rewarded that aggression by ratifying the territorial gains made by the Serbs, ceding half the country to them. Finally, we are sending in NATO forces to functionally at least guarantee those borders. The Serbs have no good reason to defy NATO, knowing that they have a year at least to sit safely behind the NATO buffer, licking their wounds, reconstituting their forces and reformulating their strategy. One, two, or five years down the road, expect to see the Serbian war machine gear up again.

TIMOTHY RYAN

Los Angeles

Re “U.S. Worries About Iranian Unit in Bosnia,” Dec. 5: After the United States and Germany voted for creation of a Bosnian state, we now find that the U.S. turned a blind eye on Iran’s violation of the arms embargo in Bosnia and is facing a dilemma of how to extract volunteer Muslim fighters who may turn out to be enemies of U.S. forces in Bosnia.

The economic embargo and sanctions imposed on Serbia impoverished people by destroying their economy and morale. Under pressure, a peace agreement was signed in Dayton, Ohio, and the Christian Serbian population in Bosnia, particularly Serbs in Sarajevo, are being forced to live under a Muslim government in their own homeland. How can we expect lasting peace when even Americans doubt that they can get out Muslim fighters imported from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, who have been killing the Serbian population for years while the media labeled Serbs as the aggressors?

Can Serbs believe in lasting peace while the U.S. promises that Muslims in Bosnia will be armed with heavy weapons?

VERA BARRIE

Newport Beach