JOHN DUFFY,
Sir, - All day I watched on my TV commemoration services held throughout the world for the victims of the terrorist attacks on the US a year ago. Newspapers are full of coverage commemorating those almost 3,000 lost lives. Why is there no mention of the lost lives of the thousands of innocent Afghan people? What is the different between New Yorkers killed by a mad terrorist act and Afghans killed by stray American retaliatory bombs?
I was at my local gym when suddenly everybody (including myself) stopped training on our treadmills and rowing machines to observe a minute's silence for the victims in the US. Will there be another minute's silence observed in the coming few months to commemorate those innocent lives lost in Kabul, Kandahar and other Afghan cities? Will there be widespread coverage of the suffering of the innocent people destroyed by American bombs?
Somehow, I doubt it.There will not even be a whisper. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN DUFFY,
Rehoboth Place,
Dublin 8.
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Sir, - 2,801 people were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York. How many were killed in the American bombing of Afghanistan? Nobody seems able to tell me this.
The images of September 11th in New York are burned onto our brains. We were not allowed to see what happened in Afghanistan.
The airwaves are jammed with commemorations of the deaths in New York. Barely a word about Afghanistan.
Why is this? - Yours, etc.,
PAULA CARROLL,
Lakeshore Drive,
Renmore,
Galway.