Debate Over NATO Bombing

Re “As the Innocent Die, Where Are All the Voices of Protest?” Commentary, May 5:

I met Tom Hayden more than 30 years ago, when I was on the steering committee of the Boston Draft Resistance Group. He asks why the voices that protested U.S. involvement in Vietnam are silent now. It’s not only because I’m older and more conservative. Many like me are more willing to trust a coalition of 19 nations than we were to trust the U.S. in its Lone Ranger role.

Hayden decries our Eurocentrism, but if we were to intervene in Guatemala or Rwanda (mentioned by him as alternatives), he would then be complaining, with some credibility, that we chose those places because we regard nonwhite life as cheap. Further, we all knew that Eisenhower had said the problem with conducting free elections in South Vietnam was that Ho Chi Minh would be elected; whereas we doubt that repatriated refugees in an autonomous Kosovo would ever elect Slobodan Milosevic. Are we wrong?

MIMI GERSTELL

Pasadena

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Thank you for your May 5 article on the impact of NATO’s bombing on the civilian economy of Yugoslavia. The real war is not between Serbs and Albanians, any more than the real war in Bosnia was among Serbs, Croats and Muslims. The real war is between extremists of any persuasion and normal people who want to live normal lives. In this, NATO has actively aided and abetted Milosevic. There are no more normal lives. The extremists have won.

RACHEL HESLIN

Canoga Park

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In Korea, we invaded North Korea with total control of the air and vast superiority in tanks and artillery. We lost 8,000 men, killed in three months. In Vietnam, same story. In Afghanistan, the native troops killed thousands of Russians and used the hand-held missile launchers to shoot down helicopters. The Russians left totally defeated. Did our military staff study these wars?

ROBERT R. WILKIE

Placentia