Madam, - Mark Steyn continues to act as one of George Bush's cheerleaders for the war on terror (Opinion, February 2nd). However, the only place where he boast of real progress is in Sri Lanka, where a peace process is under way. Mr Steyn does not seem to be aware that the start of this process preceded 9/11 and owes more to hard-working Norwegian intermediaries than to anything done by President Bush.
At least Mr Steyn does not claim the Iraq campaign to be part of the war on terror. It may be dawning that the Iraq diversion has been counter-productive, and will hinder the war against global terrorism for some time to come. That is the view of Dr Jeffrey Record of the Strategic Studies Institutes, hardly a hotbed of raving lefties. Dr Record finds that the Bush military strategy "threatens to dissipate scarce US military and other means over to many ends". If Mr Steyn is interested, Dr Record's paper "Bounding the Global War on Terrorism" is to be found on the SSI website.
Afghanistan, the only country in which a real US anti-terrorist military campaign has happened, is suffering from the results of subsequent US indifference. Instead of providing the consistent support needed to expand President Hamid Karzai's power base, the US chose to support the country's warlords. Many of these still profit from the heroin trade and run regimes every bit as fundamentalist and oppressive as the Taliban. Human Rights Watch has recently documented their abuses in a series of reports, one of them grimly subtitled "A Catalogue of Missed Opportunities".
Meanwhile the Taliban has received an influx of Pushtun recruits, probably armed and funded by the secret service of Pakistan, a supposed US ally in the war on terror. As in Iraq, the UN has withdrawn most of its personnel, and some observers expect the Taliban will soon be strong enough to attack and capture provincial capitals (Ahmed Rashid, New York Review of Books).
There are encouraging signs that the US is becoming more aware of the need to support the Afghan president. Forgive the cynicism, but in an election year the urbane Mr Karzai presents better photo-opportunities for a sitting US president than the grim clerics who will rule Iraq. But ignore the "spin" of the likes of Mark Steyn. The global war on terror is far from being won, nor is it even clear who will be victorious. - Yours, etc.,
TOBY JOYCE, Navan, Co Meath.