Protests in China

I find it interesting that the freedom to demonstrate, in China, is only allowed if it’s anti-U.S. opinion. Pro-U.S. opinion is quashed before it is allowed to start. What’s even more alarming is that the demonstrators were bused in by the Chinese government.

I do have two questions: What intelligent person stays in an embassy of a country that is under attack (May 11)? And why were the protest signs written in English?

ARNO VIRANT

San Gabriel

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In dictatorships such as China, a standard ploy consists of seizing on some pretext and sending out street mobs to burn the U.S. flag and chant, “Death to America!” This supposedly demonstrates the “deep outrage” of the people, whose well-orchestrated riots represent “spontaneous anger.”

A suitable riposte would be to send a couple of aircraft carriers into the Taiwan Strait. It would also help to send Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on a mission to Taipei. China may have its phony forms of rage, but we are the ones with the power.

T.A. HEPPENHEIMER

Fountain Valley

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The bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was not caused by malfunctioning of equipment but by an extreme negligence on the part of the CIA and other agencies. They used an old map of the city to designate the target and did not know that the embassy moved to another location. There is no place for this type of mistake in the conduct of this very sensitive operation.

The supplier of the faulty map was the same which supplied the obsolete map to the Air Force pilots in Italy, indirectly causing the deaths of the vacationing skiers.

The guilty parties in those two cases must be punished appropriately and no cover-up should be allowed.

MARCEL GAWARTIN

Ladera Heights

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In regard to Steve Pirtle’s May 11 letter: I must not have been paying attention. I was not aware NATO was responsible for burning, looting and “cleansing” farms, villages and towns in Kosovo. I bet the overwhelming majority of Kosovars support NATO actions, whatever the damage it may cause. Why would the Kosovars want to go back to their “wrecked” country? For the same reason the people in Oklahoma go back to the massive devastation. It’s their home.

RICHARD C. HEISER

West Hollywood

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The present adventure into Yugoslavia keeps exposing the lack of negotiating ability of our State Department, the overassessment of our military, the underestimation of our putative enemy, the ignoring of international law with respect to sovereignty and the sanctity of embassies, the commitment to enormous expenditures on reconstruction, a poverty of intelligence information and ignoring the Constitution with respect to war powers. There is no “moral imperative” of justification.

This tragic exercise is America’s failure at a crossroad where the selection of the right road could have brought honor, integrity and true leadership toward peace.

DAVID M. STEVENS

Mission Viejo