Sir, - Niall O'Dowd (Opinion, December 19th) quotes from an angry letter to the Irish Voice newspaper to warn us that "the possibility of an Irish-American backlash over what has been perceived as rabid American-bashing in Ireland should not be underestimated."
As the publisher of an Irish publication in New York, albeit one with a small circulation, Mr O'Dowd should know better than to stoop to such hysterics. One has to presume that if the strong Irish-American link with Ireland managed to survive our neutrality in the second World War, it can probably withstand the rather reasonable and balanced debate here about the war in Afghanistan.
It is, to put it mildly, disingenuous of Mr O'Dowd to use such a clearly obtuse "backlash" threat to lecture us on the wisdom of US foreign policy in both the Middle East and Afghanistan.
It shouldn't surprise even Mr O'Dowd that peoples throughout the world are rather suspicious of the war aims of a country which has toppled democratic governments, installed dictatorships and invaded countries in order to guarantee cheap raw materials for its industries and pliant markets for its goods.
I'm sure Mr O'Dowd can understand that it is difficult to summon up enthusiasm for a war that is aimed at defeating forces that, not too long ago, were being aided and armed by the United States. Equally, he can surely see that pummelling a poor country and killing even more people than were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon will be frowned upon by most civilised nations.
Where Mr O'Dowd really loses the plot is when tars legitimate critics of the Afghan war as sympathisers with Islamic fundamentalism. It is, after all, the United States that enthusiastically supports undemocratic Islamic regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which discriminate against women and crush all internal democratic opposition. In every conflict in the Middle East the United States has thrown its considerable weight behind the most repressive and undemocratic forces. In the process an impoverished, war-torn region full of anger and, in many cases, religious obscurantism, has been created. Only out of such a morass could a thoroughly reactionary figure like Osama Bin Laden emerge and garnish support.
In days gone by another imperial power, Britain, felt it could bully large parts of the world at will. As the "mother of parliaments" it often, as the United States does now, counterpoised its own democratic freedoms and enormous wealth against the conditions of the great masses of colonial peoples it sought to subjugate and control. In pursuit of its own interests it fomented civil wars, created large-scale poverty and enormous instability throughout the world.
With Mr O'Dowd's knowledge of Irish-American history, he will be aware that most Irish people who fled to America were victims of that imperial arrogance of another age. It's a pity that he can't see in current American foreign policy the same impulses, the same disregard for the legitimate hopes and aspirations of impoverished peoples around the world. - Yours, etc.,
Michael Delaney, College Road, Galway.