Madam, - The significance of the horrific violence visited upon London last Thursday has been somewhat occluded by the deluge of commentary, both analytic and apocalyptic. Amid the fog, however, some general features can be discerned:
1. Sympathy for, and solidarity with, the people of London must be paramount.
When called upon, the much-sentimentalised "spirit" of the capital was in abundant evidence, not only in the extraordinary performance of the emergency services, but also in the stoical resilience of the citizenry. That London has long been a target for a variegated array of fascists and murderers only bespeaks its status as the exemplary metropolis: polychromatic, liberal, tolerant.
The most comprehensive defeat that could be delivered to the jihadists would be for the open character of London to remain unaltered.
2. Attempts, mainly on the left, to mark the attacks as a settling of accounts for Iraq have been almost uniformly clunky. Having said that, it makes little sense to divorce Thursday's events from their global context. As has been conceded by internal British dossiers, "blowback" was an inevitable from Britain's intervention in Mesopotamia.
The levelling of Fallujah and the scattering of its population, the havoc implanted in Baghdad, the pacification of Basra and Kirkuk: none of these were achieved without direct or indirect British collusion.
Violent resistance, projected from the military frontier toward the civilian homeland, was always, as admitted, inevitable.
3. The agency of Tony Blair cannot go without comment. As revealed in the recently disclosed Downing Street memo, the trajectory of war had been agreed upon long before its rationale was produced. Blair led thus his nation into a war it did not want for reasons it never would have accepted.
If, as most intelligence analysts seem to think, Thursday's attacks were provoked by events in Iraq, the gravity of blame, if it is to settle anywhere in the West, must rest upon his shoulders.
4. The global nexus of Islamist terror, active across the Eurasian continent and beyond, relies primarily on the oxygen of disaffection provoked by such interventions.
For those who say that September 11th occurred before Iraq, the stalwarts of radical Islam can respond that it was not before Palestine or Chechnya. The tit-for-tat logic of attrition, the delusions of violence prevalent on both sides, must be overcome if anything like peace is to be achieved.
The conclusions that follow are only these: the best way to overcome the murderous onslaught of international jihad, and its curdled and malformed ideology, is to deny it the fuel it feeds on.
An active citizenry at home - fully engaged and empowered - complemented by fully funded public services, must be coupled with a renunciation of imperial violence abroad. The opposite route - secrecy and retrenchment, invasion and occupation - has demonstrably made things worse.
That the citizens of the West and the world come to their senses, before their leaders lose theirs, can be the only hope of those who seek an end to the atrocities detonated across London last week. - Yours, etc,
SEAN COLEMAN,
Brian Avenue,
Marino,
Dublin 3.
Madam, - It now seems that, according to some of the correspondence to this page, it is "reprehensible" to analyse the London bombings in the context of the current Middle East situation and the "War on Terror".
In fact it would be reckless not to do so.
The fundamentalist mullahs who drive the current wave of hatred require ammunition with which to recruit gullible young Muslim men and women to do their dirty work. The current situation provides an ample supply with which to influence disillusioned Muslim youth.
Western support for repressive regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, Uzbekistan and others; the perceived Western ambivalence to the plight of the ordinary Palestinians; the chaos that is Iraq and Afghanistan; the increasing number of permanent US military bases in the Middle East - all of these and more help to feed the propaganda of hatred that fills the recruiting lines of al-Qaeda.
There is a history of hypocrisy associated with the West's dealings with the Middle East. The current perception is that this has not changed and that oil is the chief motivation for Western interference in the region .
To discuss these issues in the context of the London bombs does not in anyway diminish the fact these were horrendous crimes. Nor does it impart any justification to the acts. But to ignore them is folly. - Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Church Road,
Blackrock,
Cork.
Madam, - Brian Mac Gabhann's letter of July 12th is really quite staggering. He claims that "the only countries that have been attacked are those whose governments have chosen to support Bush's military adventures in the Middle East". He then goes on to list a number of attacks including that in Bali.
It is news to me that the Islamic Indonesian government have "involved themselves in an illegal and unjustifiable war in Iraq". When one considers also the attacks in Istanbul and Casablanca, both in Islamic countries, it is obvious that his claim is nonsense.
How could any rational person believe this stuff?
Daniel Sexton's letter on the same day has got it right. We in Ireland are bound both in honour and in pragmatism to stand with those in America and Britain who are prepared to defend the values we all hold dear against fanatical terrorists who will strike at innocent people wherever and whenever it suits them. - Yours, etc,
MURT Ó SÉAGHDHA,
Headford,
Dundalk,
Co Louth.