Milosevic Ravaged Yugoslavia

Re “Slobodan Milosevic Is the Scapegoat in a Show Trial,” Commentary, Feb. 12: I was left speechless at the attempt to portray Slobodan Milosevic as a victim. The authors have an unbelievable ability to ignore the mountains of evidence of Milosevic’s strategy of a Greater Serbia. Whose army laid siege to Vukovar in Croatia? Where did the artillery shells come from that pounded Sarajevo for three years?

Marko Luposina and Andre Huzsvai dismiss the “overblown issues of ‘rape camps’ to ‘concentration camps.’ ” Can the significance of concentration camps in Europe in the 20th century be “overblown”? Virtually the only defenders of Milosevic left are many of the Serbian people, who were fed the official version of events with themselves portrayed as victims (much as Germans felt themselves victims after losing World War I). Many Serbs, however, have slowly awakened to the ravages Milosevic has done to their own country: a shrunken, impoverished state, ravaged by nationalist thugs. The testimony at the Hague trial will open their eyes to what this man and this philosophy did to the rest of Yugoslavia.

Douglas Schwartz

Los Angeles

*

It is absurd for Lopusina and Huzsvai to argue that there was a long-term NATO (read American) strategy to take over the Balkans. President Clinton had to be dragged into the Bosnian and Kosovo quagmires, and the American public certainly never clamored for intervention. To this day, it is hard to construct any rationale based on national interest for our interventions. The truth is, we used our military power to stop a madman from carrying out his dreams of a “Greater Serbia” based on violence toward others.

Milosevic now finds himself on trial for his war crimes. There were crimes committed by Croats and Muslims, and the writers fail to note that Croats and Muslims have also been indicted and stood trial in The Hague. It is not simply “victor’s justice” but a serious attempt to bring justice to at least the leading war criminals of all sides. But no fair reading of Balkan history would be complete without noting the prime and despicable role of Milosevic. His apologists even now seek to obfuscate this basic fact.

Nayyer Ali

Huntington Beach