DONAL DELANEY,
Sir, - I have read letter after letter condemning the US military campaign in Afghanistan. However, the luminary authors of these letters have failed to include any alternative solution to rendering the terrorist threat impotent.
Let us be absolutely clear that the United States has not deliberately killed any civilians. The terrorists planned and executed a scheme to brutally murder as many innocent civilians as possible. We have seen the videotape footage of Osama bin Laden relishing the outcome of his demonic acts, where he refers to our innocent civilians as "the enemy". Any nation has the right to defend itself under those circumstances.
Let us also be absolutely clear that the United States would not be undertaking this defensive action without an act of war being instigated by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. If the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership surrender themselves to the appropriate authorities, all US military action in Afghanistan will cease. The blood of every dead or wounded victim from September 11th and the Afghan conflict is on the hands of one person, Osama bin Laden.
Therefore, I ask that you do not print any more letters which criticise the United States action unless those letters include alternative practical solutions to the on-going defensive effort. Unless a practical alternative exists, simply criticising the United States shows a lack of sympathy and respect for the victims of September 11th. - Yours, etc.,
DONAL DELANEY,
San Jose,
California,
USA.
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Sir, - I read Niall O'Dowd's article of December 19th with a deep sense of relief. Here at last was somebody prepared to swim against the tide of wretched anti-Americanism that has swept the Irish media since the terrorist outrages in New York. All semblance of balance, honesty and integrity has vanished from mainstream Irish journalism, as commentators embarked on a frenzy of vicious Yank-baiting and revolting moral equivalence.
In essence, they argue that because fabulously wealthy America has somehow failed to eliminate world poverty, it must somehow be responsible. This great crime of the United States is then used to excuse, even justify, the wicked mass murder of September 11th. The fact that the Islamic world is almost exclusively tyrannised by brutal autocracies that blame America and the Jews for the plight of their unfortunate people is never mentioned.
The fact that America sacrificed the lives of its young men in two World Wars, and in many struggles since 1945, against the twin menaces of fascism and communism, is omitted.
The fact that America has consistently been the foremost defender of the Muslim people over the past decade in Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo, has gone unremarked.
American military strength has underwritten the cheap energy sources we Europeans depend on, and indeed the very freedom that allows to us to express ourselves in ways unknown in lands further to the East.
That this freedom of expression should be turned on those who gave it to us, and in such a hateful manner, is a lasting shame on the Irish fourth estate. Time and again wildly exaggerated figures of civilian casualties in Afghanistan have been printed, without a shred of supporting evidence. Equally lurid claims about the tactics and weapons used by American forces in that theatre are rarely challenged. Diatribes masquerading as analyses of American action inevitably resort to the usual oil/arms/CIA conspiracy fantasies.
Throughout the troubled history of our small island we have had no greater friend than the unselfish people of the United States. Though the left-wing elites that claim to speak for us have forgotten this, I can assure the American people that the Irish people have not. - Yours, etc.,
PHILIP DONNELLY,
St Albans,
Hertfordshire,
England.
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Sir, - Not long ago, the Atlantic was more of a bond than a barrier between Ireland and the United States. Although the instant electronic bridges with which we can span the ocean today allow us to see the words the other proclaims, they do little to help understand the message.
Of the many unforeseen consequences of September 11th, one of the most unforgiving, and least forgiveable, has been the loss of friends of many years' standing - and not only by physical violence. - Yours, etc.,
DICK JOYCE,
Allschwil,
Switzerland.