PHILIP DONNELLY,
Madam, - Fintan O'Toole (Opinion, February 4th) does Donald Rumsfeld a disservice. He quotes from a recent article by the US Defence Secretary in which a strategy is mapped out for the future defence of his country. Mr Rumsfeld, Princeton graduate and ex-Navy pilot, was at one time a prominent businessman and frames this new philosophy in the idiom of the CEO, referring to entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and suchlike.
Distracted by this language, Mr O'Toole decides that Mr Rumsfeld is the brains behind a new brand of American aggression, war without end. He depicts the Secretary as a pinstriped Dr Frankenstein who has taken the cruel American war machine, bolted on some free-market ideology, and unleashed it on the world. To justify permanent conflict, Washington borrows a snake-oil sales pitch from successful corporations: invent the product, then create demand for it. In this way war on Iraq is dreamed up, then sold to the public.
It is true America has discarded the rules of war as laid down by some crusty old Prussian general 150 years ago, for the nature of war itself has been transformed since September 11th.
Decades of Cold War moulded an American military that was inflexible and cautious, a monolith that expected to fight a conventional war against an equivalent enemy, both observing the legalistic niceties of international law.
Today Russian tanks and submarines no longer pose a threat to the free world. We are menaced now by an enemy that has no country, no government, no single ethnic identity - a shadowy army with global reach, bound by a twisted version of Islam, aiming not to win battles and conquer countries, but to bring suffering and chaos to a civilisation it hates: the free, secular, tolerant West.
Its commanders dwell in back streets and send foot-soldiers who welcome death. Statecraft, diplomacy, geopolitics - the terminology of an era already passed. When you want to negotiate with al-Qaeda, whom do you call?
Radical danger demands radical defence; rather than sitting around reacting to events, the US military must become as adaptable and energetic as the enemy.
Mr O'Toole finds this shift in thinking alarming. No doubt the red-tabbed generals who ordered cavalry charges in 1914 found machine-guns and barbed wire alarming too. History has not judged their leadership kindly.
Saddam Hussein's place in this new landscape is significant. He is a genocidal psychopath with a stash of chemical and biological weapons, supplied mainly by the French and Russians during the 1980s. He openly finances terrorist atrocities in Israel and exploits the cynical horse-trading of the UN Security Council to wage war on his own people. It is hugely condescending for the anti-war lobby to assume Iraqis prefer continued oppression to liberty.
To mobilise public support for its anti-American crusade, the old Left deployed the stereotype of the loud, stupid, arrogant Yank who shoots first and asks questions later. However, since the attacks on its people, America has shown commendable restraint, while the European axis of appeasement sinks deeper into irrelevance, fingers in ears and heads in the sand.
The Romans had a saying: Si vis pacem, para bellum. Who wants peace, prepares for war. - Yours, etc.,
PHILIP DONNELLY, St Albans, Hertfordshire, England.
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Madam, - As the dispute between the US and Iraq reaches a critical phase, the substantial number of Americans who oppose US military action without UN approval are feeling more and more helpless. Not only did Bush fail to win a majority of the popular vote; he is acting outside the scope of traditional executive power by stating his intention to declare war without express approval of the legislature and where no clear and present danger to national security has been demonstrated.
Average Americans are beginning to ask themselves: can anything stop this man's crusade? I read with delight about peace protests organised by the Irish people, and wish to express my gratitude on behalf of all peace-loving Americans. It gives us hope that together we can create a world that is more than just "one bully beating up another". - Yours, etc.,
GRAHAM STULL, Everett, Massachusetts, USA.
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Madam, - I can't work out whether Dr Ciarán Ó Coigligh (February 6th), is naïve or misinformed, or if in fact he shares George W. Bush's rather selective views on the right to life.
Dr Ó Coigligh supports "President Bush's opposition to abortion (which is the deliberate killing of the unborn) and to partial-birth abortion (which is infanticide)". The parentheses are his. He is entitled to his opinion and I write neither to support nor decry it.
However, he is also "upset at the prospect of an attack on the people of Iraq". He appeals to Mr Bush's "Christian principles" and to both his and the Republican Party's support for "a culture of life".
If Dr Ó Coigligh needs help in squaring the Republican regime's stance on Iraq with its "culture of life", the following may prove interesting. Attorney General John Ashcroft oversaw seven executions as governor of Missouri and has voted to limit the death penalty appeals process. (He also bemoaned Missouri supreme court Judge Ronnie White's "serious bias against a willingness to impose the death penalty").
Mr. Bush's own record as governor of Texas is even more startling. He opposed legislation seeking to ban the execution of people with an IQ below 65. Moreover, under his watch from 1995 to 2000, 152 executions took place in the state.
I suggest to Dr Ó Coigligh that the Republican Party's stance on Iraq is entirely consistent with its "culture of life". - Yours, etc.,
PADDY MONAHAN, Castle Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin 3.
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Madam, - It is surely notable that the most militant and violent contribution from Irish society to the US/Iraq issue has come from the so-called "Peace Camp". Our once rural and picturesque airstrip at Shannon now resembles a military base in south-eastern Turkey with constant patrols by armed uniformed troops brought out to counter the threat of attack from "peace campers".
Now that these activists have succeeded in dragging the Irish military directly into the war effort, I trust they will ponder the wisdom of their actions.
The response of the Green Party and its evasion about condemning the acts of thuggery seen by the world at Shannon in the name of peace, has well and truly set their political credentials up there with Youth Defence and the Eco Warriors. - Yours, etc.,
H. J. Becks, Naas, Co Kildare.
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Madam, - Vive La France! - Yours, etc.,
RORY G. MUSGRAVE, Cleggan House, Cleggan, Co Galway.