CATHAL RABBITTE,
Madam, - If it is true that US aircraft on the way to the Gulf (where they will eventually bomb an unknown number of anonymous Iraqi civilians) are refuelling at Shannon and that Irish companies are exporting technology to be used to prosecute America's war in Iraq, isn't it time we had a reassessment?
Isn't it time we joined NATO, stopped fooling ourselves about neutrality, finally admitted to ourselves that we are part of the American imperium and all that goes with it?
Isn't it time we stopped fooling ourselves with guff about understanding the developing world (being post-colonial ourselves), about being a nation that's somehow different to those with huge armies, about everyone else loving us?
Isn't it time we told the people of Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world that we believe in pre-emptive action over dialogue, that business comes before morality and that whatever the shareholders want we can, sure you know, facilitate?
Isn't it time too to reassess Oliver Cromwell, no longer a murderous anti-Irish tyrant but a man who gave his all to drag Ireland kicking and screaming into the 1640s, as George Bush is now doing with Iraq in the 21st century, with the full blessing of our coalition partners? - Yours, etc.,
CATHAL RABBITTE, Dokki, Giza, Egypt.
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Madam, - According to your edition of January 10th, Hans Blix and his UN team of inspectors seem not to be looking for the weapons that they were assigned to search for, and apparently not in the right place either. For like much of the world's English-language press you report him as admitting having so far failed to find "the smoking gun".
Has he, then, overlooked the elementary ballistical fact that a gun only smokes after the shot is fired? If that's what they're after, those looking for "smoking guns" would have to wait till the trigger is pulled. No smoke without firing.
Yet it seems they have also been looking in the wrong place (Iraq), when in fact they only needed to scan the press, in whose pages a whole arsenal of "smoking guns" have been spotted in the past few weeks, wreaking collateral damage on thought. What if such "smoking guns", so deceitfully hidden in our language, have been placed there in the name of those with their "finger on the trigger" of real weapons of mass destruction? No smoke-screen of clichés without fire, then.
When, otherwise, is the smoking gun ever a weapon of mass destruction? Only when made of newspaper, or when politicians' hot air fills readers' minds. The media's "guns", even if "not found" by Hans Blix and his team, will have surely set the world's sights on war. But will the "smoking gun", traceable to Texan figurative usage, adequately describe the toxic air over Iraq's oilfields when the next war's armoury starts to "smoke"? - Yours, etc.,
GILBERT CARR, Dale Road, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.
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Madam, - It is almost with disbelief that most Irish people are watching inexorable steps to war. Each day war-mongering and Anglo-American propaganda is presented, for the most part uncritically, by the various media outlets. The US and the UK, in effect, have indicated that, whatever stand is adopted by the UN, they intend to precipitate war by invading Iraq.
On behalf of the executive committee of Irish PEN, we suggest that those who are strongly opposed to the imminent and grave threat of war convey their reservations to president George W. Bush and prime minister Tony Blair. - Yours, etc.,
J. ANTHONY GAUGHAN, Chairman; ARTHUR FLYNN, Secretary; Irish PEN, Killarney Road, Bray, Co Wicklow.
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Madam, - While people are complaining they weren't told about the presence of American planes in Shannon, the people of Iraq are suffering savagely under Saddam Hussein. I think Shannon and the issues it raises about public rights are a minor concern compared with the grave abuse of human rights suffered by our fellow human-beings in Iraq. Let's get our priorities straight.
America stepped in to protect the Muslim population of Kosovo from Milosevic - both a brave and successful action, which sadly caused loss of life on both sides. Broadly speaking, Iraq is a similar situation.
Yes, America has been a friend to this regime in the past but times have changed. Stalin - the biggest mass murderer in history - was an ally and "friend" in the second World War because it suited the West. Politics is arguably both an amoral and paradoxical business - not that I offer that as an excuse, rather a statement of fact.
I am tired of people who suddenly seem to know it all about America's foreign policy. I don't disagree with a healthy suspicion of authority, but I feel we should stop casting America as a big bad wolf and realise that Saddam is not a victim. I am pro-American to a point because I would like to see this cruel man removed from power, his secret police destroyed and justice upheld in Iraqi society.
Let Americans land in Shannon? If it goes any distance to saving a nation from tyranny, they can land in my back garden. - Yours, etc.,
ANDREW Mc NULTY, Whitshed Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow.