Madam, - Desmond Fennell (September 10th) says there is little difference between Iraq under the rule of Saddam Hussein and the plight suffered by ordinary Iraqis under the US-led occupation. He also rails against the notion that the US would seek UN support in its efforts to administer post-war, post-dictatorship Iraq.
It is difficult to understand the smallness of mind that afflicts Mr Fennell and those sundry others who take grim satisfaction in the difficulties encountered by the US and its allies. The removal of that evil tyrant Hussein was always going to be a relatively easy task for the foremost military power on the planet. To heal the inevitable sociological wounds left by Saddam's regime was, inevitably, going to be the more difficult project.
No amount of firepower will ever inspire the fear necessary to suppress a people. Saddam, like most dictators, knew that only organised and arbitrary terror, supported by a system of neighbour informing against neighbour, could bring an entire people to heel. The so-called "civilised world" could have waited another 10 or 20 years to see if Iraq could of itself dispose of its despot. The inevitable death toll of such cowardly inaction would have dwarfed the relatively tiny losses suffered by the people of Iraq since the beginning of US military action.
The current maelstrom of competing interests, in Iraq, can be managed only by massive investments of time, personnel and money. The US for its own selfish reasons liberated the Iraqi people. It is now time for the UN to support the US in its effort to facilitate the Iraqi people's transition to, if not democracy, then whatever is its closest approximation in a country more comfortable with tyranny. - Yours, etc.,
PAUL BOWLER, Charvey Court, Rathnew, Co Wicklow.