Madam, - The capture of the genocidal ex-tyrant Saddam Hussein has struck a cruel blow to the hopes and dreams of many within Ireland's political and media establishment whose meal ticket is the peddling of anti-American hatred, in print and public speech.
It seems their great white hope threw in the towel without a shot being fired. For shame. With his straggly beard and badly dyed hair, Saddam seems less like the proud Arab strong man they told us he was, and more like an elderly tramp fished from a park bench. But even a tramp has some friends. Saddam's praetorian guard, the thousands who swore to die for him, melted away and left him to his fate down a hole in the desert. Hannah Arendt's observation about the banality of evil rings ever true.
President Bush, the cowboy in the White House, has also disappointed the anti-American nomenklatura. The courage and tenacity of his leadership in the war on terror has only highlighted the gross inadequacies of our own ruling caste, a circus of sleazy opportunists and embittered soixante-huitards whose recent attempts to bully the weaker nations of Europe into ratifying their constitution ended in acrimony. President Bush remains undaunted as he cleans out the Augean stables of the Middle East; I hope the New Year gives him the electoral success needed to finish the job.
No doubt in the coming weeks we will read much about the foolishness of the Americans in humiliating this former champion. It will only make the Arab street more angry, the experts will insist! Maybe.
Or maybe the people of the Muslim world will tire of placing their faith in the murderous psychopaths, who through their epic misgovernance dragged an entire region backwards into medieval poverty.
Who blamed the resultant misery of their people on the global conspiracy between Yankee and Jew, ably assisted in this blood libel by their apologists in the Parliaments and newsrooms of Europe, the very cradle of civilisation.
Who have hijacked a world religion and profaned it in their demented crusade against the West and all its decadent works, bringing chaos and death to New York, Bali, Buenos Aries, Kenya, Israel, Istanbul, Tunisia, Egypt, Moscow, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
In the meantime the deluded and delusional of Ireland's "anti-war" movement will gather in Dublin, placards aloft, to protest Saddam's human rights, while his erstwhile victims in Baghdad will gather to celebrate the downfall of their tormentor. You couldn't make it up. - Yours, etc.,
PHILIP DONNELLY,
St Alban's,
Hertfordshire,
England.