A chara, - If there have to be wars during the holy seasons of Christmas and Ramadan, surely there must be a more humane way of conducting them than by terror bombing civilian populations. In times we like to imagine to have been less civilised than our own, wars were fought between armies and by soldiers animated by ideas of courage, honour and duty, and willing to die for their beliefs. Now we are assured by military strategists on television that British and American pilots have returned unharmed from their bombing missions while the extent of civilian casualties remain a subject too delicate (or uninteresting) for comment.
We in Ireland have learned from bitter experience over the past 30 years (and most recently at Omagh) that bombing is a cowardly and indiscriminate weapon of war. The victims, as likely at not, are not armed soldiers, but unarmed civilians, innocent boys and girls, and even unborn babies in the womb. If my memory serves me right, it was the Nazis in Spain in the 1930s who first devised and developed the systematic bombing of civilian populations as a weapon of war, and extended their methods to London, Coventry and Belfast in the 1940s. I was brought up in England in the aftermath of the second World War to believe that Britain had stood alone against such barbarism. Now I have to watch from Dublin as a British Prime Minister shows himself obsequious to an American President on the verge of impeachment and callously indifferent to the sufferings of the innocent victims of war. It certainly isn't cricket, but then who can believe nowadays that England can play cricket?
Surely Ireland, the land of saints and scholars, has something to say to the world on these matter at this time, for Ireland has many friends in America and in England and can speak from a compassion born of long years of innocent suffering. Perhaps we can invite President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair to return to Ireland (and especially to Omagh) this Christmas 1998 to see for themselves how the victims of the bombs are managing to endure their daily ration of mental and physical pain. And perhaps they can share in the midst of such suffering the spirit of peace and good will that all our churches still proclaim and strive to enact. - Is mise, Gerald Morgan,
FTCD, Trinity College, Dublin 2.