Madam, - The reaction of some people in this country to the events in London last Thursday has been predictable, yet still maddening. It has been claimed that, by assisting or associating with the US and British military, we in Ireland also risk attack from radical Islamic terrorists.
For this to be believed one of two positions must be held: either that the US and its allies as one party to a conflict, and the radical Islamists as the other, are moral equivalents and that we in neutral Ireland should not take sides; or that the radical Islamists are indeed fascist terrorists but we in Ireland should not be seen to take sides lest they turn their murderous ire in our direction.
The former is misguided in the extreme, the latter is cowardice made all the more embarrassing by the stoic resolve shown by Londoners since last Thursday. Both positions are reprehensible.
We in Ireland don't have to believe that current US foreign policy is the correct response to its radical Islamist enemies. But it does not automatically follow that we should make the mistake of affording the evil responsible for the atrocities in London, Madrid, Bali, New York, East Africa and elsewhere a legitimacy that obstructing the US could give it.
It has also been claimed that it is hypocritical to be overly exercised by the death and destruction in London when a far greater number of civilians are being murdered weekly in Iraq. This implies that the conflict in Iraq is directly responsible for the attacks in London. For this position to be held one must believe that radical Islam is a 21st-century phenomenon.
The murder of 225 people, almost all local civilians, in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, for example, gives the lie to this idea. Furthermore, when the followers of al-Zarqawi commit mass murder outside Shia mosques and police recruiting stations it is hard to see why, exactly, the occupying troops should be blamed for the ongoing death and destruction in Iraq. Does anyone believe that their extraction would bring peace to Iraq and save lives?
Wahhabi radical Islam has been in existence since the mid-18th century. Al-Qaeda is not a hierarchical organisation with easily defined, limited, political goals in the vein of the IRA. Osama bin Laden is more of a cult figurehead than an actual leader. Radical Islam is disparate and has many local as well as trans-national aims throughout the Islamic world.
There is no one person or group to negotiate with and, indeed, no concessions that would ever satisfy this fascism. So we in Ireland would do well to re-examine our desire to bury our heads in the sand. - Yours, etc,
DANIEL SEXTON, Dublin Road, Blackrock, Co Louth.
Madam, - Given the scale of the murderous attacks in London last Thursday I suppose an element of hyperbole is inevitable. We are told that such outrages are attacks on "the West", on "all of Europe" or "all of us", or even on "civilisation itself". Such claims appear difficult to substantiate, since so far the only countries that have been attacked have been those whose governments have chosen to support Bush's military adventure in the Middle East.
It is both correct and understandable that right-thinking people everywhere would wish to express solidarity with the people of London in the face of this murderous and unjustifiable attack; but I worry when this shades into an apparent eagerness by our leaders to put their citizens in the firing line as well. The London, Madrid and Bali outrages were offences against international law and human rights, but they were not attacks on "all of us", on "our way of life" or on "Western democracy". They were attacks on those countries whose governments have chosen to involve themselves in an illegal and unjustifiable war in Iraq.
This in no way justifies such attacks or makes them less deserving of condemnation, but so far the groups behind them appear to be making a clear distinction between countries which have offered support to the US invasion of Iraq, and those which did not.
It would be unwise and irresponsible of our leaders to seek to blur this distinction, as our security and safety may rest upon it. - Yours, etc,
BRIAN MAC GABHANN, Béal an Daingin, Conamara, Co na Gaillimhe.
Madam, - The killing and maiming of innocent civilians must be condemned without reservation, but apologists for the war in Iraq should not be allowed to present the London bombings as part of a wider campaign to attack Western civilisation and its values.
Last week's atrocity occurred as a direct consequence of British support for US foreign policy and was most likely carried out by a small group of fundamentalists whose ardor has been fuelled by the ongoing fiascos that are the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
To admit this is obviously not in the interests of the British government, particularly when a more palatable theory suggests a monolithic enemy, indiscriminate in its hatred and willing to die to attack a "way of life".
Rather than indulging in such apocalyptic rhetoric, George Bush and Tony Blair need to focus on resolving crises of their own making. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to use the suffering of innocent civilians to further justify ill-fated and deeply irresponsible foreign policy initiatives. - Yours etc.,
GARRETH McDAID, Drumleague, Leitrim Village, Co Leitrim.
Madam, - The letters decrying British foreign policy in Iraq as the cause of the attack last week in London miss the point entirely. Whatever about the moral or immoral nature of the war, the actions of those who bomb buses and trains should not be able to influence foreign policy in the UK.
As Jonathan Sacks, the UK Chief Rabbi, observed on Thursday, these acts are "not the weapon of the weak against the strong but the rage of the angry against the defenceless and innocent". Events in Iraq provide no justification.
We in Ireland should also not refrain in the future from taking what we believe in good faith to be a principled stance on foreign policy, even if that makes us a potential target for similar terrorist outrages. To act otherwise would certainly be immoral. - Yours, etc,
EDWARD BURKE, Burgatia, Rosscarbery, Co Cork.