Sir, - Patrick Goggin (November 9th) hits the nail squarely on the proverbial when he writes: "As the Irish Government does today with its contribution to Europe's Rapid Reaction Force, so did John Redmond judge that Ireland's honour demanded an acceptance of its responsibilities as a European nation in a European war."
The bad news for Mr Goggin is that his direct hit is upon his own Blimpish thumbnail misrepresentation of that ambiguously named "Great" war, and Ireland's situation in relation to it.
A cursory reading of the period would have brought to Mr Goggin's attention that this orgy of "horror, mud and blood" was a Darwinian conflict between the then globally dominant military and economic power of the British Empire at its sated zenith, and the emerging Teutonic contender stretching its already culturally Aryan limbs in search of Lebensraum.
While the emerging colony of Ireland was certainly a geographically contiguous element of Europe, its political and economic situation for nigh on a millennium had been closer to the status of an African state; say, for example, the then Belgian Congo, the exposure of whose savage administration at the hands of King Leopold's "philantropy" contributed to the knighthood of Roger Casement. That individual was soon to pay dearly for making the same invidious comparison.
Now that we have joined Europe, economically and politically, a case can certainly be made for our paying the price of defending the internal peace and stability of the political structure that has contributed so much to our current affluence. But our own history dictates that we recognise the realities on which that wealth is based and that the darker side of European global hegemony not drop below consciousness.
For these and other reasons, some of us will continue to adhere to the conviction that our honourable (to use one of Mr Goggin's own favourite words) record in the UN should take precedence over the realignment with the burgeoning NATO-led replacement. - Yours, etc.,
Damien Flinter, Ballyconneely, Connemara.