Kosovo Crisis
* Sen. John McCain (Opinion, April 11) keeps justifying the deployment of ground troops in Kosovo by pointing out the weakness of the Serbian army and its easy defeat by the Croatians during the first round of the Balkan wars.
The Croatian Serbs were defeated by a Croatian army whose strategy was planned by American generals and supported by NATO airstrikes, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 300,000 Serbs from their centuries-old homes.
NATO ground forces will be going against the Yugoslav army, which will be fighting on its home turf in an inhospitable terrain where the likes of Hitler and other invaders met a bloody end.
McCain’s political aspirations and failing grade in Balkan history do not justify the loss of American lives.
DANILO M. TOMOVICH
Temple City
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* Alan J. Kuperman’s article, “Support of Rebels Was a Mistake” (Commentary, April 11), is a classic case of blaming the victim for the crime. Slobodan Milosevic mistreats the Kosovars for eight years; some of them radicalized by the oppression fight back; then Milosevic kills civilians and torches villages, thus radicalizing just about all the Kosovars.
At this point comes Kuperman with his judgment: Kosovars are to blame for the ethnic cleansing and are “terrorists” fighting to protect their families.
JERZY G. RELICH
Huntington Beach
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