Sir, - You have published some moving letters on this subject, which do credit to your readers. But there have been some amazing ones that call out for a response. One such was from Rev Mock (September 26th).
He is against "appeasement". This is not defined, but from his reference to the 1930s I gather he wants us to go in early with guns blazing. If we had done that earlier in the 1930s we might have avoided Pearl Harbour, the London Blitz, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Wait a minute - it was "our" side that pushed the button on the last two, causing catastrophic loss of innocent civilian life.)
For God's sake, against whom do we go in with guns blazing? A starving peasantry in a remote mountain country completely ignorant of what it is all about? Fortunately Mr Bush is not giving way to calls for immediate extreme military action but is carefully gathering evidence and warning his people that this will be a long and different "war".
I take it from his title that your correspondent is a Christian clergyman. I wonder if the founder of Christianity would agree with the "blazing guns" syndrome? My reading of the New Testament suggests to me that He might well have had more sympathy for the "conscientious objector" so despised by Rev Mock.
On the other hand you carried a letter the following day from Mr Michael Purser hoping that the aircraft now being assembled should carry food rather than bombs to Afghanistan and this is the sentiment that I believe we Irish should be supporting.
I believe that if and when the targets are identified, it is important that the people of Afghanistan, and Islam generally, are on "our" side. - Yours, etc.,
W.J. Murphy, Malahide, Co Dublin.