Sir, – The Irish Anti War Movement calls on the UN and NGOs to organise humanitarian airlifts to the beleaguered Yazidi people, criticises the recent US military intervention, and questions US and British motives regarding Iraq and Gaza (August 15th). This represents confused thinking. Few nations have the military capability to provide such airlifts, and fewer still would be willing to accept the risks involved, but top of the short list would be the US and Britain.
If we depended on the UN to intervene, we could expect to wait at least a month for a compromise resolution, and longer still for a relief effort to be organised. Any sort of military effort would be deferred indefinitely, with Irish involvement further delayed while the triple lock was unpicked. Of course, by that time Isis would have resolved the issue in a rather extreme manner.
It seems strange to me that people in the Republic of Ireland, a country which allocates inadequate resources to its own defence and which shrinks from membership of international defence organisations, can persistently call on the “international community” to defend oppressed minorities around the world. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN BUTLER,
Philipsburgh Avenue,
Fairview,
Dublin 3
Sir, – Jim Roche of the Irish Anti War Movement seems to suggest that western intervention to help the Yazidi minority in Iraq is a bad idea because previous western governments made poor foreign policy decisions. He also seems to suggest that the “Islamic State” fighters would not now be slaughtering infidels and apostates in Iraq if the West had only treated them better.
This is the worst sort of self-flagellation and fails to recognise the movement for what it is, a fanatical group intent on establishing the most extreme sort of medieval theocracy in the 21st century. It would save everybody a lot of time and be a lot more honest if the IAWM renamed itself the Irish Anti-American Movement and be done with it.– Yours, etc,
JOHN O’FLAHERTY,
Old Tannery Lane,
Grampound,
Cornwall TR2 4PZ