Madam, - The President made the wrong comment in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Her apology is most welcome, as is the widespread and largely gracious unionist acceptance of her apology.
Yet in the midst of the apologies the real point about comparisons with Nazism is being missed.
There is something ironic about the protestations against Mrs McAleese's remarks being made by politicians who have themselves repeatedly likened their political opponents to Nazis throughout the Irish conflict.
Unionists are not the only politicians to do this. A quick archive search of The Irish Times reveals that in the past 10 years David Trimble, Bertie Ahern, Conor Cruise O'Brien and many others have likened Republicans to the Nazis in one way or another, while Republicans have likened the RUC to the SS and the Orange Order to the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.
The deaths and injuries in our conflict should never be trivialised, for the pain and grief of individuals and surviving relatives is the same the world over.
But too many of us, it seems, forget that our recent conflict, though of great importance to many people on this island, is but a footnote in world history when set beside the great struggles against Nazism and apartheid, or the ongoing battles over resources in famine parts of neo-colonial Africa. It also pales when set beside our own 19th-century Famine.
If every local conflict can be compared to Nazism and the systematically planned mass murder that was the Holocaust then language becomes cheap and ineffectual.
Contemporary Irish analogies to the suffering during the Holocaust or to the Nazi murderers of millions are blinkered, self-centred hyperbole.
Irish political discourse, North and South, would do well to dispense with this vocabulary when referring to our own conflict, partly for our own sake, but primarily because those comparisons are a trivialisation of the Nazi Holocaust and as such surely unacceptable. - Yours, etc.,
Dr PÓL Ó DOCHARTAIGH, Fairfield Road, Portstewart, Co Derry.
Madam, - At a superficial level Mrs McAleese's apology might be an end to the matter, were she just a private citizen. Her outburst could be put down to the deep-seated sentiments describ- ed very aptly, for once, in Mr Kyle Paisley's observation that one cannot take Ardoyne out of the woman.
However, Mrs McAleese is not a private citizen. When she speaks on public occasions, she speaks as President of Ireland. Her disgraceful remark has demeaned and compromised that office and I see no honourable course other than her resignation as sufficient to preserve the integrity of our most important office of State. - Yours, etc.,
CHARLES M. QUINN ELTHAM, Eglinton Road, Dublin 4.
Madam, - I am grateful that the President has graciously apologised for the deep hurt caused to Protestants by her callous remarks. Now that she has done so we should move on and seek to build peace on this divided island.
As one of those Protestants so offended, I shall endeavour to apply the Biblical principle to forgive and forget! I hope others can do the same. - Yours, etc.,
Rev BRIAN KENNAWAY, Former Convenor, Education Committee, Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, Crumlin, Co Antrim.
Madam, - How dare Ian Paisley Jnr and Michael McGimpsey criticise the President for speaking the truth? Bigotry and sectarianism, from whatever source, have seriously affected many generations of Irish men and women, north and south of the Border.
Can the gentlemen concerned stand over the deeply offensive utterances, made over many years, by Rev Ian Paisley, about the Catholic Church, the Pope, the "Free State"?
Speaking as a Southern Protestant, fortunate enough to reside in a more ecumenical part of the country, I have the utmost respect for Mrs McAleese and for the substantive effort she has made, since her first inauguration, to reach out to all sections of society throughout the entire 32 counties and beyond and for her abundant and entirely evident respect for all traditions.
The spectacle, broadcast to the world, of young, traumatised Catholic schoolchildren in Belfast having to "run the gauntlet" of viciously sectarian, if not racist, taunts and threatening behaviour from so-called "Protestant Loyalists" is painfully fresh in mind.
The hellishly inhuman treatment of all the victims of the Holocaust, or of "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, Rwanda or Darfur results from deep-seated sectarianism and racism which ultimately leads to a total lack of respect for human dignity and for life itself.
It is only through reconciliation and mutual regard that we can teach future generations respect for all mankind irrespective of race, colour, creed or ethnic background and to vigorously oppose the proponents of hatred.
"Let he that is without sin. . ." - Yours, etc.,
DENIS L. MINCHIN, Ballina, Killaloe, Co Clare.
