Regarding professor Raju Thomas' Jan. 3 article"The case against Kosovo independence": Thomas should know better. People do not take up arms against their rulers and risk their lives for no good reason. They do so out of desperation, as a last resort.
The Albanians of Kosovo rose up against their Serbian oppressors when all else failed. They had reached the point when men cry out, "Give me liberty, or give me Death" -- to echo the famous cry of Patrick Henry, the great patriot of the American Revolution.
Furthermore, Thomas would do well to consider another point: If fellow Slavs such as the Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrins and Macedonians could not live under the same roof with the Serbs, how can he expect the Albanians -- who are NOT Slavs and have almost nothing in common with the Serbs apart from sharing the same Balkan space with them -- to do so?