Madam, - With New York City Council having passed a motion opposing a pre-emptive military attack on Iraq, I presume Mary Harney will be writing to the New York Times condemning New Yorkers for being anti-American! Shame, shame on her, her party and her Government for lacking the moral courage to speak out like the public representatives of New York, a city that could understandably have chosen to stay silent.
As you reported last Friday, more than 140 cities and towns across the US, including Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, have passed similar resolutions and yet the government of this supposedly neutral country cannot even find time to allow a proper debate in our national parliament.
In a week which will probably turn out to be the last before the war begins, horses at Cheltenham were given more priority than the impending death of thousands of innocent Iraqis. I am angry and saddened at the moral delinquency of this Irish Government. - Yours, etc.,
GERARD PRENDERGAST,
Neville Road,
Dublin 6.
Madam, - With conflicting signals coming from so many different quarters it is impossible to know what the real motives are for attacking Iraq.
While it is probable that various agendas are carefully concealed beneath the surface, only one thing is certain. The Americans and the British are not going to war to free the people of Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. - Yours, etc.,
M.D. KENNEDY,
Silchester Park,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin.
Madam, - It is just about all over, save the mopping up. The United States, the UK, and the rest of the brave and the willing will be in Baghdad shortly. No more Saddam, no more torture and senseless death in Iraq. No more gas attacks, no more bio-weapon development, no more Scuds lobbed into Israel. A good thing is about to happen. Send in the Marines! Thank God for George Bush.
The French, the Germans, the Greens, the Pope, and my namesake Higgins were wrong: wrong to start with, wrong now, and wrong tomorrow. The world will be a better and safer place without Saddam. War is never moral, it just is. Ask the Pope to meet some of the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps; then let him tell us all about the morality of wars.
Once again the US will have spent its time and its money and risked the lives of its young men and women to do the right thing. It was never about oil, it has always been about right. Doesn't the United Nations seem a bit irrelevant today?
Americans in Ireland Against the War: go somewhere else; you are as useful here as teats on a bull. The American public is in favour of removing Saddam by over two to one. George Bush is the President of the United States of America. The Marines are on the move. Life is good. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL HIGGINS,
Adare,
Co Limerick.
Madam, - As a member of the Labour Committee on Ireland I helped organise the meeting at which Gerry Adams addressed delegates to the 1983 Labour Party Conference in Brighton. The LCI campaigned in the Labour Party for British withdrawal from Ireland. Central among its arguments was that withdrawal was the application of the socialist and democratic principle of the right of nations to self-determination: that nations should have the liberty to form and choose governments free from external rule or domination.
Whatever one's view of this argument as applied to Ireland - and while supporting the end of the war in the North I believe it still holds true - the right to self-determination was at the heart of the entire post-war decolonisation project. Be it in India, Kenya, Algeria, the Congo, Korea or Vietnam, mass struggles and bloody wars were fought against European and US colonial power for the right to self-rule .
The coming war against Iraq, while economically about the control of Iraqi oil, is politically the first step in the reversal of the entire post-colonial settlement. By overwhelming force of arms, or the threat thereof, the US will seek to install compliant regimes to replace those that do not fit the needs of Western neo-liberalism.
While the Bush administration struggles to maintain popular support for this war in the US, "official" Ireland in the form of the Taoiseach is prepared to perform the despicable role of helping legitimise Bush by publicly associating with him.
Truly wretched therefore, was the presence of the Sinn Féin delegation at Bush's public relations exercise. No amount of prattle about the peace process can hide the fact that those claimed the mantle of the struggle against colonial rule in Ireland were happy to sit and sup with those who would impose it by force in Iraq.
As the bombs fall on Bagdhad, Sinn Féin will have time to reflect on how they have been used, or on their duplicity. - Yours, etc.,
BRENDAN YOUNG,
Celbridge,
Co Kildare.
Madam, - As it now seems that the unthinkable will happen, we add our voices to those who continue to urge that the full resources of international diplomacy supported by worldwide public opinion should be engaged to resolve the present Iraq crisis; and that armed attack and invasion should be used only as a last resort when in due course all non-violent means have been clearly shown to be ineffective.
This view is based on two firm grounds: firstly, military action, no matter how selective, will greatly intensify the suffering and danger to life of ordinary Iraqi people. Secondly, the hinterland - the great rivers of Mesopotamia contains heritage sites and artefacts of world importance, mute witnesses to the birth of the culture of cities. This unique and irreplaceable treasury, now inadequately managed and maintained, would be further eroded by blanket military action.
The case for armed assault - the verified possession by the dictator of operational weapons of mass destruction and his discernable intention to use them on a known target - has not yet been made beyond reasonable doubt, nor has it been endorsed by the United Nations. In the meantime, common humanity and world heritage are surely the priority. - Yours, etc.,
BRIAN and MARIE HOGAN,
Bloomfield Avenue,
Dublin 8.