Sir, - I feel obliged to say: Stop it, George W. Stop it now. We were all shattered by the atrocities of September 11th. We shared the bereavement of the American people, even the anger. We almost sympathised with cries for blood and revenge. This will pass, we told ourselves. We have all known anger.
It is in the Muslim and Jewish ethic to cry "An eye for an eye". But America claims the enlightenment of Christ, with a better way to peace.
And then we heard it from George W., the most powerful politician in the world (by a tiny, dubious, majority). "War," he said. "Revenge," he said. "Dead or alive," he said. And thus he began to waste that huge resource of goodwill and fellowship toward the American people, like pouring good wine into the ocean. And on and on he went, and there is no sign that he will stop. The level of his current rhetoric ascends occasionally to that of a junior school debate.
Has it never occurred to Americans that the awful catastrophe of September 11th was a reaction to something? I am not anti-American, nor a na∩ve liberal. I am totally against terrorism. But bombing starving civilians in sheer revenge is surely not the solution. This is not going to bring Osama bin Laden before an American court, or any court, any more than it brought Saddam Hussein there.
Have the American people learned nothing from the thousands of deaths of innocent women and children these futile quests have caused?
Stop it, I say! - Yours, etc.,
T.P. Hayes, Heytesbury Street, Dublin 8.