Sir, - The sheer depravity of the catastrophic violence inflicted on the United States on September 11th has changed our world for ever. I think we all believed that there was a certain point beyond which no human being would go in the actual performance of evil. There was a moral line, an ethical standard, which no rational creature would dream of crossing, or so we thought.
The idea that people could actually hijack a plane full of innocent people and deliberately crash it into a public building crowded with other human beings, killing thousands, including themselves, was simply inconceivable to any sane person. Yet this is precisely where the demented notion of a holy war, a jihad, seems to lead some people.
Bertrand Russell spoke about the "anti-rational philosophy of the naked will" and if ever a phrase were relevant and applicable to what took place in the United States, this surely is it. Indeed, one thinks of Nietzsche's "transvaluation of values" where, echoing Milton's Paradise Lost, he said, "Evil, be thou my good."
We contemplate the viciousness and savagery of the Nazis with the same kind of uncomprehending horror and revulsion. How can human beings do such dreadful things to each other? Hilaire Belloc said that every encounter with evil demands an explanation. Perhaps only God can provide us with that ultimate answer. The Viennese psychiatrist and philosopher Viktor Frankl concluded his wonderful book Man's Search for Meaning with these words: "Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."
International terrorism has developed into a festering cancer which eats away at the very heart of civilisation. The demented ferocity of the fundamentalist Taliban has inflicted the most savage cruelty on the unfortunate people of Afghanistan. Their strict and barbaric implementation of the Sharia laws and their notorious suppression of women are an affront to every humane ethical instinct.
Their refusal to submit the murderous Osama bin Laden to face a trial dealing with crimes against humanity tells us all we need to know about their total disregard for the value of innocent human life and the importance of international law.
I don't know whether it is possible to put a stop to the evil of international terrorism. I certainly do not want to see innocent people suffering in the attempt to eradicate this curse. However, if it were possible to end the scourge of terrorism in the world, surely this would be a truly commendable thing, something to be celebrated.
Since the horrors of September 11th, I am amazed at the number of apparently sane people who seem to go out of their way to justify or explain the terrorist. What motivates these people is a profound hatred of the United States of America. They indulge in the most benighted left-wing twaddle - smug, armchair revolutionaries who enjoy all the comforts of a liberal democracy. Do they not realise that no democratic society is safe from these violent enemies of democracy? Perhaps they should try living under the Taliban for a while! - Yours, etc.,
Anthony Redmond, North Great George's Street, Dublin, 1.