Sir, – The hyperbolic condemnation by Jim Roche on behalf of the so-called Irish Anti-War Movement (Letters, September 3rd) of the suggestion that Ireland might provide “practical support” to an EU mission to train Ukrainian military personnel raises more questions than it answers.
If the movement is truly anti-war, why not a straightforward public and unqualified condemnation of Russian aggression, of its illegal invasion, barbaric conduct and occupation of parts of Ukraine and a demand that Russia immediately withdraw from all Ukrainian territory?
If Russia so withdrew, the war would end.
Could it be that Mr Roche believes any such demand to be an act of total futility because it is likely that neither the condemnation nor the demand would be taken seriously by Russia’s ambassador in Dublin nor positively acted upon by Vladimir Putin? Could it be he knows that any such statement on behalf of his Irish Anti-War Movement would be taken no more seriously than a Russian tsar long ago took the views of the Skibbereen Eagle?
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There is no moral superiority nor principle worth promoting that advocates that the people of Ukraine should be given no assistance in defending themselves against a totalitarian state intent on extinguishing their country’s independence, all democratic freedoms and guilty of multiple atrocities.
The implication of Mr Roche’s letter and his unelected movement’s stance is that Ukraine should be abandoned by the democratic world and simply surrender.
Instead of writing to The Irish Times, perhaps Mr Roche and other members of his movement would engage with some of the 40,000 Ukrainian refugees now obtaining sanctuary in Ireland and obtain their views on the false equivalence they depict between Russian aggression and Ukrainian defence and whether Ukraine should surrender and be subsumed as a colony within an expanding Russian empire? – Yours, etc,
ALAN SHATTER,
(Former minister
for justice and defence),
Dublin 16.
