Sir, - The mind boggles at the pot-shots coming from a smug, crass and downright ignorant portion of the population as regards NATO action in the Balkans. We really do seem to be suffering from an acute case of what Kevin Myers calls "Pious Irish Neutrality".
According to this mentality, we are utterly surrounded by evil war-mongering American imperialists and their allies. So ingenious is their international plot to enslave us that they are actually helping to fuel Ireland's economy - not by giving us arms, nor bases, not even supporting a generalissimo. That would have been too obvious. No - horror of horrors - they're giving us thousands of jobs! Not even the X-Files saw this one coming.
Pious Irish protesters are not alone. Here in Italy the walls are covered in graffiti with the likes of "Clinton Killer" or "burn NATO bases". Not one single piece of anti-Milosevic graffiti. "Pacifists" even hurled stones at a NATO air base under the flag of what must be an exhausted Che Guevara. Cossutta (Communisti Italiani) protests against "American imperialism" while President Scalfaro continues to remind us that "war has never solved anything". Point half-taken. But do we therefore assume that he is against his country's and Europe's liberation from Nazism? War is an obscenity, but surely continued diplomacy in the face of naked and bloody aggression is worse. - Yours, etc., Steven Nestor,
Via dei Mercanti, Torino, Italia.