Cockburn on Kosovo

Thank you, Alexander Cockburn, for some rare clarity on the tragedy in Kosovo (“Hawk Still Rules White House,” Commentary, April 8). What is happening there is not “genocide” or a “holocaust” but typical, albeit horrific, civil war brutality. Even the killing of 2,000 Albanians is insufficient grounds for superpowers to destroy Yugoslavia, a sovereign and legitimate nation.

We are not fighting there for humanitarian or other tangible reasons, but to rescue NATO’s (read Bill Clinton’s and Madeleine Albright’s) credibility, having talked tough for so long and done nothing. Shame on us.

VINCENT BASEHART

Los Angeles

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I was sure that the Messiah would arrive before I’d agree with anything your unreconstructed Stalinist columnist Cockburn ever wrote; but, lo! his remarks constitute one of the few sane statements on our war with NATO against Serbia. He calls this president, who has been obsessed, it seems, from childhood years with something called his “historical legacy,” a man thirsty for blood against small and weak enemies; in short, neither reasonable nor moderate in his conduct of military policy.

I would suggest that there is something loony, to consider put- ting 200,000 troops into an area 60 miles by 70 miles, with a population of less than 2 million. Set Kosovo province against the map of the Los Angeles County area with its nearly 14 million, and you get a clear sense of the disproportion between means and ends that is utterly irrational. As Cockburn notes, where was Clinton only the other year when 300,000 Serbians were rousted by Croatia with much slaughter of the helpless out of their homeland province of Krajina?

JASCHA KESSLER

Santa Monica

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There is the rank smell of hypocrisy permeating Congress and certain Republican candidates for president relating to Kosovo. When there was the hint of Christian religious persecution in China and Russia that did not involve looting, murder, rape or ethnic cleansing, these people wanted Clinton to issue all sorts of threats to the two countries involved.

Now, led by Pat Buchanan, a man who never had two minutes of military service but who has a lot of advice to give about it, says this is not our business. Yes, these are Muslims, not Christians, who are being persecuted. Do you detect the odor of hypocrisy?

GEORGE F. SLAVIN

Santa Monica

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If we had had NATO and stronger world leadership in 1939 when Hitler marched into Poland and smashed Polish forces, there probably would never have been a World War II.

B.R. BAUM

Brea