Kosovo Crisis

* Re “Like It or Not, Russia’s the White Knight This Time,” Commentary, June 4:

What’s not to like, if parties outside of NATO can help bring Slobodan Milosevic back to the bargaining table and end the bombing? In spite of all its humiliations in the last decade, Russia is still a world power to be reckoned with. How much better to have it involved in the solution, rather than standing outside hurling criticism.

Of course Russia has ulterior motives for its diplomatic moves; doesn’t everyone? But if the bottom line is peace, NATO can only be strengthened by its willingness to pursue all avenues toward its goals and to share equal credit with all contributors to a peaceful outcome.

NORMAN W. NIELSEN

Highland Park

* Following the invasion by Germany in World War II, the Soviet Union deported eight entire nationalities from Russia, numbering 1.5 million into central Asia. Around 500,000 perished from the harsh conditions of their transportation and resettlement. Its ethnic cleansing was numerically comparable to Kosovo’s but far deadlier. Not only deported, these people were whited out from Russia’s culture, history and geography. It worked.

Today we fail to see the sick irony of Russia as mediator in the Yugoslavia-NATO conflict over ethnic cleansing.

WILLIAM HOHRI

Lomita

* Re “Who’s Got the Courage? Aid Workers,” Commentary, June 3:

Thanks for the article on the great, courageous folks flying in food and help. May I add to the list my friends, the Stoschers, whose church near the border in Albania has been feeding and assisting over 400 refugees daily ever since the war began? They asked our church to pray for all of them, as they need continued strength, and for all the churches that are doing likewise. World Vision and the Salvation Army are there, too.

JANET ROBERTS

San Clemente

* How should we weigh the morality of NATO operations in Kosovo?

NATO fares reasonably well by most of the criteria of traditional just-war theory, e.g. legitimate authority, just cause, right intention, last resort and proportionality. The remaining criterion, noncombatant immunity (actually casualties), is subject to more debate.

But Albert Camus, writing in occupied Paris in an essay, “Neither Victim nor Executioner,” argued that one should take life only if a cause were so important that one was willing to sacrifice or at least risk one’s own life.

Current U.S. policy fails by this standard. To many, our desire to afford total protection for our troops makes us executioners.

JUDITH STIEHM

Santa Monica

* Peace in Kosovo? A Republican political nightmare.

BOB KERBER

Oceanside

* Having seen the results of more than two months of NATO’s “surgical bombing,” I am immensely relieved that there are no NATO surgeons on staff at my HMO.

STEPHEN C. LEE

La Habra