Sir, - J. Hogarty (November 15th) proclaims, in an unconvincing attempt to portray the American government as Afghanistan's saviours: "As I write, men are happily shaving off their forced beards in Kabul, music is being played loudly in the streets, kites are being flown, and women are laughing and lifting their burkahs."
Perhaps Mr Hogarty would be interested to note that there was also much cheering on the streets of Kabul when the Taliban gained control of the city in 1996, such was the brutality of the Northern Alliance when it last held control of the city between 1992 and 1996.
The Alliance slaughtered civilians in their tens of thousands during this period, many of them because they were suspected of being Taliban sympathisers. Is it any wonder that many of the residents of Kabul appeared so eager to show their opposition to the Taliban on discovering the city had once more fallen into the hands of this army, notorious for its brutal acts of rape and murder on a horrifying scale.
Mr Hogarty rightly welcomes the news that the delivery of food supplies has been made easier by the Taliban's retreat; presumably, then, he must have been horrified when the New York Times reported (September 16th) that the US government had demanded from Pakistan the cessation of food and other deliveries to the civilian population of Afghanistan.
Of course, it is quite apparent that the Taliban has itself been a brutal and repressive regime. However, it is worth dwelling on the following points:
1. The Taliban was an equally ruthless government when some of its members were invited to Houston, Texas to be entertained by members of the oil company Unocal in 1996.
2. During the Taliban's reign in the late 1990s, and right up until the early months of this year, the US government provided hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban.
3. The Caspian Basin is the greatest source of untapped fossil fuels in the world. A pipeline running through Afghanistan would allow access to this fuel.
4. The Taliban offered to hand Osama bin Laden over for trial in an international court if provided with evidence of his guilt. Although this would have fulfilled their obligations under international law, and was the mechanism used to bring the Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing to court, President Bush responded by saying he wasn't interested in discussing evidence - presumably because no indictable evidence against bin Laden actually exists;
5. One of the objectives of the current war is to establish a new government in Afghanistan. Leaders who have been involved in mass murder in the past and have permitted horrific acts of rape there (including the Northern Alliance and "moderate" members of the Taliban, according to Colin Powell) will be allowed to participate in this government as long as they co-operate with the US.
I trust none of this newspaper's readers, Mr Hogarty included, will need me to spell out how the above facts may be related. Of course, facts have traditionally been of little importance in the Bush household: George senior famously remarked in 1988, after his army shot down an Iranian commercial flight, killing 290 civilians: "I will never apologise for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are." - Yours, etc.,
Brian Patterson, Fairview, Dublin.