When the United States is faced with a foreign challenge such as war, many times crucial issues and results remain unattended to.

Both the democratic and republican parties and leaders are responsible for this. When problems such as violence, political turmoil and destruction follow wars in places including Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, these countries’ people continue to suffer. This suffering will be the building block of the next wars and possibly future attacks against the US.

The 9/11 attack by Al-Qaida was greatly influenced by the US and the United Nations committing genocide against the Bosnian Muslims. These Bosnians were victimised to such a large extent by the Serbs that the support these Serbs received as a result of the American-led United Nations arms embargo against the Bosnians greatly encourged many Middle Eastern Muslims to support Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaida network in the 1990s.

If the US had truely supported the Bosnians in their quest to live in a democratic Bosnia without the bloodletting from the Serbs, the United States would not have gotten tangled up with a conflict that was certain to bring harm to the US in the future.

Al-Qaida could have been halted at a much earlier stage and would not have grown into the major threat that it became if the US had stopped the brutal Serb assault against the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The United States, however, did not end the Bosnian holocaust but rather it encourged it by supporting the Serbs.

Now Al-Qaida is a major threat and has brought massive death and destruction to the shores of the United States. All of which could have been prevented if democrats and republicans would show some decency and make policies that do not tolerate brutal regimes including Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

The United States should never again allow itself to get caught in a world with too many big bad regimes as it was caught in the 1990s. We will all be better off.

Kevin Beck
Germantown, Maryland