Kosovo Conflict

Isn’t something wrong with the fact that even I, an eighth-grade student, can realize our president’s mistake? By earlier establishing that he would not send ground troops to Kosovo, he closed himself off to that option. Now he’s trapped within a threshold he set. Yes, he is commander in chief of our armed forces, but, hello? Last time I checked, strategy over “good” press conferences, right?

TIM HERSCOVITCH

Sherman Oaks

*

Re “Kosovo Conflict Creates Schism Within the GOP,” April 7: Apparently, Pat Buchanan, Sen. James Inhofe, et al., never heard of Adolf Hitler. Holo-what? They must have considered that just another “European problem for the Europeans to take care of.”

MARTIN L. MORRIS

San Diego

*

Clinton’s security advisors are asking Americans for more time. How long does it take to write a letter of resignation?

IVAN RASOVICH

La Crescenta

*

Your April 6 editorial, “Payoff in Respecting Global Law,” was right on the target with one glaring exception. The United Nations and its NATO allies need to get the message about respect for “global law” before they can hope to expect Yugoslavia to respect it. Yugoslavia may be run by a rogue despot with little regard for the U.N.’s efforts and global law, but the “rogue superpower” and its NATO group also have no respect for global law. This disrespect shows in their lack of working with the U.N.’s Security Council and in the U.S. being in arrears with its dues ($1 billion) to the U.N. to implement this global law.

Let’s move this Serbia-Kosovo matter back to the U.N. and give global law a chance.

M. GENE PEARCY

West Hills

*

The conflict in Kosovo and all other conflicts like it will continue forever unless the people of these nations stop defining themselves by their past and where they came from and start defining themselves by their future and where they wish to go. This is the defining element that has made the great social experiment that is America the success it is.

DAVID A. SPENCER

North Hollywood

*

Refugee populations. Ethnic cleansing. Have we come to the point where human population has risen seriously close to this planet’s carrying capacity? That the solution to overpopulation (and overconsumption) will be a continual series of isolated and brutal genocides? Nationalism is at war with internationalism in every culture. Revenge often gets more votes than justice. It’s time to consider the implications on a personal level.

WILLIAM LEIDENTHAL

Los Angeles

*

While California public schools continue to suffer from underfunding, leading to shortages of quality teachers, up-to-date textbooks and efficient classroom facilities, the hacks in Washington are pouring millions into bombing Yugoslavia. For what has already been spent thus far in the campaign, dramatic improvements could have been funded to improve the sagging educational dilemma on a national scale. Yet the president will continue to remark on the crisis in our schools. Go figure.

CHRIS SPELLMAN

Anaheim