U.S. Role in Kosovo

Alexander Cockburn (Column Left.April 22) writes that “senatorial liberals like Barbara Boxer of California are discovering the joys of war.” This senator finds no joy whatsoever in war.

In October 1998 U.S. brutal crackdown in Kosovo, and he began a systematic ethnic cleansing of the Kosovar Albanians. This recent crackdown is the culmination of a decade-long campaign during which he took away the autonomy granted to the Kosovars in 1974. In March, after Milosevic refused to sign the Rambouillet peace accords, NATO began airstrikes against Serbian military targets. Milosevic then further intensified his war on Kosovo. NATO bombing did not set off Milosevic’s brutality in Kosovo; it was Milosevic’s genocidal war on Kosovo that tested the will of the civilized world.

I will work toward the earliest possible end of this terrible situation; an end that will send a clear message: Ethnic cleansing and genocide must not stand.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER

D-Calif.

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As usual, Robert Scheer (Commentary, April 27) is right on target. There is no moral justification for the destruction of northern Yugoslavia as payback to Milosevic for the Serbian Army action in Kosovo. As unpleasant as it is for NATO leaders to admit, there was no refugee crisis in Kosovo until cruise missiles began landing in Yugoslavia in the name of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The preemptive NATO attack was predicated on the assumption that Milosevic intended to purge ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The bombing guaranteed that he would.

The current program to perpetrate an equivalent travesty on the innocent civilians of northern Yugoslavia is morally bankrupt. Stop the carnage now!

STEVEN M. KAIR

Oceanside