Clinton’s Cabinet

I am afraid I cannot in any way share the elation felt by David D. Newsom in his column about Bill Clinton’s choice of Warren Christopher as secretary of state (“Warren Christopher, a Man of Trust,” Commentary, Dec. 23). At least not if he bears any of the traits of his mentor, Cyrus Vance, the man who, by his irenicism and pusillanimity, has done more than anyone other than the Chetnik Serbs themselves to ensure the extinction of the United Nations state of Bosnia. Serbian President Milosevic and his cohorts, no doubt, could not believe their good fortune when the United Nations had the extraordinarily bad judgment to choose the milksop Vance to oppose them.

Everywhere in the world the forces of genocide have come to the surface, buoyed at least in part by the strange choice of a person like Vance to counter them. Witness most egregiously the rebirth and revitalization of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

With a Vance-ite Christopher at State, the world can look forward to a reign of terror and a massive loss of life it has not seen before, while Christopher, as Newsom pictures it, struts his unutterably sublime (and impotent) character in its wake.

MICHAEL DUSENBERRY

Van Nuys