Madam, - I am pleased that Niall O'Dowd (Opinion & Analysis, September 20th) has hit back at the anti-American brigade and their condemnation of Irish aid to Hurricane Katrina victims. However, I would have preferred if his argument had focused more on moral and international friendship considerations, rather than on the danger to our own self-interest if we offend our US benefactors.
This self-interest has characterised the morally bankrupt arguments of many of the anti-war lobbyists. With regard to the use of Shannon by US forces, we'd be better off to keep our head down, they say. We're too small to be a target; let other countries take the heat of al-Qaeda terror. Just look at the trouble stirred up by the invasion of Iraq. It would have been better to leave Saddam in power and let him sort out the Iraqis or vice-versa. We'd be in less danger now. Bush and Blair are the enemies of world peace, not Bin Laden.
The lesson of history is that doing nothing allows evil to flourish. Right now the core issue is knowing who are your friends and who are your enemies. Your friend may well do something of which you strongly disapprove but, rather than demonising and alienating him, you should express your disapproval and try to influence a change in his behaviour. The routine demonising of Bush and the US by prominent commentators, sauced with their unconcealed intellectual contempt, has made them an effective, unpaid fifth column for al-Qaeda. Such is the absence of balance from many commentators that you'd get the impression the US is actually sponsoring the suicide bombers in Iraq.
The newspaper-cuttings section of the al-Qaeda publicity department must be a happy place to work these days. While its denizens pump out their own propaganda through the internet and Islamic media channels, the Vincent Brownes of the West work assiduously on undermining the US/UK war effort and, by extension, the justification for opposing al-Qaeda terror. - Yours, etc,
PETER MOLLOY, Haddington Park, Glenageary, Co Dublin.
Madam, - As an American citizen living in Ireland for 13 years, I have never once encountered the "anti-Americanism" so frequently mentioned on your Editorial and Letters pages. I sometimes encounter criticism of particular policies of various US administrations, and when these criticisms are informed and well argued, I find them useful and often enlightening. Likewise, although I sometimes have criticised particular policies of governments here, no one has ever accused me of being "anti-Irish".
I am puzzled by the sentiments of the self-proclaimed defenders of America I encounter in The Irish Times, and am alarmed, to say the least, by their frequently threatening tone. Whomever they speak for, it is not for me or for my interests as an American citizen. - Yours, etc,
STEVE COLEMAN, Arbutus Avenue, Harold's Cross, Dublin 12.
Madam, - Niall O'Dowd misses the point. John O'Shea and Vincent Browne accepted - indeed, highlighted - that the victims of Katrina were poor: their point was that we should not give money to help them because they are surrounded by many, many wealthy people and governed by a wealthy republic. The people of Africa, by contrast, are surrounded by people who cannot help them and governed by impoverished or indifferent governments and therefore are more in need of our limited resources than Americans are. - Is mise,
BRIAN HOGAN, Thornville Gardens, North Circular Road, Limerick.