Madam, - I received a call today from a volunteer working for Richard Bruton, who is one of my TDs and whom I greatly respect. I took the opportunity to ask him about Mr Bruton's stance on the use of Shannon for US military flights to Iraq.
He said he did not know Mr Bruton's views on this issue but that, for his part, he supported the use of Shannon for this purpose. The US was trying to bring peace to the Middle East and, furthermore, we owed America a debt for its intervention in the second World War.
The first of these assertions has been well debated in these pages and if anybody is so blinkered as still to believe that America's intervention is for the greater good, a letter from me is unlikely to change their minds.
However, the second assertion is potentially a much more pernicious one in that it is not untrue but grossly simplistic - yet it is still widely believed. No less a person than Frank McCabe asserted recently on radio that America had "saved us in two world wars".
Personally, I believe we owe the US a debt for many reasons and the last thing I wish to do is to say anything that might seem like a debunking of the American contribution to our culture and civilisation. However, when America's contribution to the second World War is sentimentalised for the sake of questionable propaganda, this only serves to cheapen its real achievements and insult others whose contribution was as great or greater. Without wishing to denigrate the real heroism of American servicemen on Omaha Beach, in the Ardennes, at Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and elsewhere, this bravery must be put in perspective. Consequently, here are a few facts that should be borne in mind.
1. America did not intervene in the war of its own initiative. It was forced to do so - firstly by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and subsequent declaration of war and secondly by Hitler's declaration of war on it.
2. The Germans themselves acknowledged that they lost the war on the eastern front in a campaign that cost over 20 million Russian lives, mostly civilian. Just to put this in perspective, the Russian casualties at the battle of Moscow - by no means the bloodiest battle of the campaign - were more than the total American and British losses for the entire war.
3. America derived huge economic profit from the war, while virtually all the other protagonists finished worse off.
4. The American Civil War - in which the citizens of that country fought each other - remains by far the bloodiest conflict in American history, the second World War and Vietnam not excepted.
I repeat that we still have reason to be grateful for America's intervention. Apart from its contribution of combat forces, its material aid to the Russians was important. Both then and after the war, while it could be argued that the US acted out of self-interest, it was enlightened self-interest - which is more than can be said for the present administration. But to suspend criticism of current US policies on the basis of a simplistic and dewy-eyed perception of the American role in the second World War is not acceptable.
- Yours, etc,
COLMÁN Ó CRÍODÁIN, Ardcollum Avenue, Artane, Dublin 5.