Student denounces Kosovo involvement

Professor Miklos N. Szilagyi's words yesterday on the Kosovo situation were exacting. I, for one, have a difficult time accepting "moral duty" as a reasonable premise for present U.S. involvement in Yugoslavia. This is not to say that I support Albanian ethnic cleansing or other clearly immoral behavior on the part of Milosevic. Yet I, like most Americans, am hardly capable of accurately assessing the Kosovo crisis. Nor do I feel that the U.S. government fully understands the situation. For these reasons, the United States is not in the proper moral position to make war in Kosovo. As Szilagyi writes, "It is wrong to take sides in a war that we do not understand."

Moreover, I do not feel that the United States, given its frequent instances of immoral behavior - both in national and international scandals - has the ethical right to declare a "moral" imperative for military action in Kosovo.

Why don't we devote the vast amount of resources used in Kosovo, both financial and otherwise, to solving the serious problems of poverty, education, racism and immorality in our own country?

If I am overlooking important aspects of the Kosovo situation, please enlighten me. Yet, given the facts that I am aware of, it seems that U.S. action in Kosovo cannot be justified on a moral basis. For this reason, the United States has an obligation to put an end to its involvement there.

Mark S. Dincecco
Economics and philosophy senior