Sir, - So what's Vincent Browne going to do now? Apologise to the people of the United States, maybe? I refer to his outrageous article of October 17th, entitled "Afghans the Victims of US Terrorism".
As I write, men are happily shaving off their forced beards in Kabul, music is being played loudly in the streets, kites are being flown, and women are laughing and lifting their burkahs. According to radio reports, 400 UN trucks are trundling unmolested towards remote settlements to feed the hungry.
And why after five years is this suddenly possible? Because the country that Mr Browne had the perversity to label as "terrorist" barely a month after September 11th, the United States, has exercised its power with great self-restraint in bombing the Taliban (those men of faith who specialised in publicly shooting women in Kabul soccer's stadium for moral turpitude and in hanging men from the goalposts. Look how brave they are now!)
Last Sunday was Veteran's Day here in the US. At a service to honour those Americans who twice gave their lives to save Europe from itself, a man I was talking to, when he realised I was Irish, asked why de Valera had offered Ireland's condolences on Hitler's death. After all, he said, by May 1945 the entire planet had got the plot and understood what Hitler represented. I squirmed with embarrassment.
It seems to me that Mr Browne's Afghan/US terrorism articles reveal something of the same self-righteous perversity that de Valera showed: a stubborn refusal to get the big picture because a personal political animus looms too large in the imagination. In both cases there was a major failure of moral judgement. A luxury, perhaps, that can be indulged in a State that has never had to take responsibility for its own physical security, thanks to the US. - Yours, etc.,
J. Hogarty, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.