LETTERS to the Editor.

Offended by Day

Former Managing Editor Samuel H. Day Jr. wrote that he is "above all, ashamed of the silence, the helpless hand-wringing, even the craven collaboration of many American progressives and liberals" with regard to NATO's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia ("America at Its Worst," June issue).

I am offended by Day's remarks. I am proud to be listed among progressives and liberals who are at least as concerned about ethnic cleansing as they are about NATO's intervention. It took the intervention of impure imperialist-oriented capitalist powers such as Britain, the United States, and the oppressively Communist Soviet Union to stop Hitler and his ethnic cleansing. Like Hitler, Milosevic ultimately understands only force.

Jay D. Jurie Sanford, Florida

I have much respect for Sam Day's commitment to nonviolence, but his breast-beating and finger-pointing over the American bombing of Serbia are too easy.

Why not deal with the hard issue that Kosovo poses for pacifists and progressives? Namely, the failure of Ibrahim Rugova, the Gandhi-inspired leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo, to rally ethnic Albanians and roll back the Serbian crackdown of the past decade.

It was Rugova, as the leader of the Albanian Kosovar shadow government, who adopted the policy of nonconfrontation and who developed a parallel system of Albanian schools and health care when the Serbs ended the province's autonomy. In the end, Rugova was discredited as an apologist for Milosevic, and his authority was supplanted by that of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Could it be that nonviolence of the sort that Day and Rugova promote is ultimately powerless when confronted by a thug like Milosevic?

It's an old question, and I fear that George Orwell got it right in 1941 when he rebutted English pacifists who refused to take up arms against Hitler. "Despotic governments can stand `moral force' till the cows come home," Orwell wrote. "What they fear is physical force."

Marc Eisen Madison, Wisconsin

Kudos to Samuel H. Day Jr. have also wanted to use the word "shame" when describing how many of us feel about our government's policy in the Balkans. We must remember, however, that this is not an isolated act. This is the same government that gave us Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and Desert Storm, and here at home, the attack on Waco, MOVE in Philadelphia, and the imprisonment of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Two televised comments by our leaders fill me with shame. The first was when Secretary of...