Kremlin Crackdown in Lithuania

In your editorial “Russians Are Coming, but to Do What?” (Jan. 9), you made the following statement: “It’s impossible not to sympathize with those young men who evade the draft or who have deserted from the armed forces. For recruits, Soviet military life even in the best of times is nasty, brutish and sometimes short.”

You might consider having the courage to make a similar statement in support of young American men and women who do not want to go die for oil in the Middle East. How many body bags will inspire such a statement?

ANN BOURMAN, Los Angeles