Sir, - The United States represents about 3 per cent of the world's population. It consumes about 25 per cent of the world's oil production.
It causes about 25 per cent of the world's atmospheric pollution and disdains to take any action to reduce it.
It has the world's largest arsenal of weaponry which it has used with truly horrendous effect over the past 56 years, since it obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic weapons. It is also the world's largest arms dealer. It and its hirelings have killed and maimed millions of people in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Panama, Cambodia and Guatemala, etc., using not only conventional weapons but also chemical devices to destroy vast tracts of land as well as their inhabitants. How's that for terrorism? The world is over populated by at least 1 billion people and most of them are starving while the Americans enjoy a sumptuous lifestyle provided by their disproportionate use of the planet's stores.
Third world countries are kept in thrall by bribery, unrepayable interest on debts or, in the last resort, fear of military action.
It is no surprise to me that there are outbursts of desperate reaction against the US by such fanatics as their erstwhile protΘgΘs, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, evil as such attacks may be.
It is no surprise, either, that instead of the world's leaders looking into the causes of such desperate and suicidal actions, they give uncritical support to the latest display of US killing power which will, once again, prove to be a means of obtaining further control over energy resources by the Americans.
I have friends and family in America and I think the people of that great nation need to make sure that their "democratically" elected leaders begin to lead them in the right direction - or we are all lost.
The current American ethos, that American lives are sacred whilst those of other nations can be wiped out en masse, is reminiscent of another powerful military regime I recall from the 1930s. - Yours, etc.,
William Heap, Cnocβn an Fh∅od≤ra, Cuhig, Lauragh, Killarney, Co Kerry.
