Sir, – My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Paris and every other place on Earth plagued by sick men with weapons and bombs. Terrorists have no religion whatsoever. Their religion is intolerance and a hatred of peace. The news from Paris is very frightening. May God be with us all against all types of extremism and terrorism. – Yours, etc,
Dr UMAR Al-QADRI,
Al-Mustafa Islamic
Centre Ireland,
Dublin 15.
Sir, – My thoughts are with those whose relatives and friends were murdered in Paris, those who were injured, and those caring for them, and the brave men and women of the French security services tasked with responding to this crisis and defending civilised values. – Yours, etc,
MARY BYRNE,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – I am shocked at the killings in Paris and feel deeply for the stricken families and survivors. Likewise for the members of the security forces and the families of those who prepare to face terror on our behalf. – Yours, etc,
JIM FITZGIBBON,
Athlone,
Co Westmeath.
Sir, – To all those blaming the weekend’s barbaric assaults in Paris on the recent wave of refugees entering Europe, may I remind them that these extremists are the very people that the refugees have fled Syria and elsewhere to escape from. – Yours, etc,
COLM O’MAHONY,
Greystones,
Co Wicklow.
Sir, – The hysterical reaction to Mick Wallace TD's comments about the horror inflicted on the city of Paris on Friday last was wrong ("Mick Wallace criticised over tweet about Paris attacks", November 14th). It betrays a lack of interest in asking the hard questions about why we are facing such a growing and increasingly violent threat from extremists and whether decades of "closet imperialism" by some of the world's major powers in the Middle East has contributed to the crisis we now face.
Mr Wallace’s comments were presumably aimed at making us think about these matters. Much of the criticism was about their timing but is it not the job of parliamentarians to ask important questions at the very moment when it is most uncomfortable for them to be raised? It is easier to debate the merits of an argument when the immediate crisis or drama has passed. Easier, but less impactful and challenging of any self-righteousness that often contributes to the accepted view.
What happened in Paris cannot be justified but Mr Wallace never attempted to do so. The perpetrators and their peers who have been wreaking an even greater toll in the loss of tens of thousands of human lives and the suffering of tens of millions across the Middle East and north Africa are evil personified. There is no justification for their actions in Paris or anywhere else but, again, Mr Wallace never suggested that there was or ever could be. What I heard him ask was whether France – as a nation – could have, through its arms industry and its foreign military strategy, contributed to what had happened in its own capital city?
That he tweeted this question as the full scale of the horror was still unfolding seemed to many to be insensitive.
Perhaps it was but, in any crisis, it is by asking the hard questions at the moment of greatest shock or concern that people are forced to think about its cause or causes.
For France read other European states and most certainly Britain and the US which have, for decades, been involved in an approach to affairs in the Arab world which has never been thought through, is largely ill-considered, inconsistent and driven by strategic self-interest. We rarely think of these things when hundreds of people are killed and maimed in, for example, Lebanon, Syria or Turkey, perhaps by the same group to which belonged the murderous thugs who perpetrated the Paris killings. We do not dwell on those events to the same extent even though the death toll may be much greater. What we do know though is that the causes are the same and that administrations, past and present, in, among others, Washington, London, Bonn, Madrid and, most uncomfortably right now, Paris, must take some responsibility for all the lives lost and damaged even when the incident occurs on their home soil.
The complexity of the political situation in the Middle East and North Africa is beyond our understanding. It will likely be a theatre of chronic instability for decades to come but that does not mean the rest of the world can simply abandon it. While all the major powers – East and West – must be involved in working toward long-term solutions, they must too be held to account the better we can determine that their actions are concerned solely with protecting and improving the interests of the people who are under threat and in whose interests they will claim to have acted.
Wherever there is parliamentary democracy, non-aligned and Independent politicians like Mick Wallace have a particularly important role to play in keeping the actions of these administrations under scrutiny, and they should be encouraged to so do all the more so at times of heightened sensitivity because, it is at that precise point, that their contributions will generate most consideration. – Yours, etc,
Yours etc,
FC DRURY,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.