Sir, – Fintan O'Toole's piece (Opinion, March 15th) rationally avoids the increasingly hysterical western media and Nato attitude to the war in Ukraine.
He points out that unless Ukraine is to become the new Afghanistan or Iraq, then the Ukrainians themselves must rein in their natural and understandable impulse to defend their country by continuing to shoot at Russians; until hundreds of thousands of their civilians are killed from starvation, disease and neglect.
This is what happened in the more than 15 years of war in Iraq where he estimates a minimum of 500,000 civilian deaths occurred. And there was no mention of American leaders being charged with war crimes for bombing civilians.
Similarly with Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. If Israel bombs thousands of Palestinian citizens to death as it has done repeatedly, these are collateral damage. If Russia does exactly the same it is a war crime. Sanity must prevail, the volume of media shrieking must be drastically reduced, unless something even more unimaginable happens: nuclear war.
Sabre rattling must stop on all sides and cool heads must prevail to negotiate however unsatisfactory a peace settlement at least tolerable to protagonists on either side.
– Yours, etc,
MAURICE O’CALLAGHAN,
Ballydehob,
Co Cork.