Madam, - Mark Steyn appears to blame the United Nations itself for the success of the terrorist attack in Baghdad last Tuesday (The Irish Times, August 23rd). He accuses the UN of subscribing to a "charade" by attempting to maintain its independence in Iraq and failing to accept greater US military protection.
At the risk of labouring the obvious, he seems to have missed the point. The UN envoy, Sergio Vieira De Mello, who died in the terrorist attack last week, was an advocate of a sovereign, independent Iraq. Had his views been heeded by the US administration, this tragedy would never have happened. The US-led occupation has turned Iraq into a terrorist magnet for Islamic extremists. The US administration claimed before the war that al-Qaeda was operating freely in Iraq; this is more true under the occupation than it ever was under Saddam Hussein. US policy has given an unprecedented opportunity to Islamic extremists to make Iraq the focus of their terrorist campaign against all foreigners.
The US-led coalition's occupation of Iraq gives comfort only to Osama bin Laden and his followers. The US administration and its apologists should return to reality before more innocent lives are lost. Political authority in Iraq should be handed over to a new UN mission, pending the establishment of a democratic Iraqi government.
Any other course of action merely continues to give strength to the perpetrators of the atrocity committed last week. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN WALSH, Dunshaughlin, Co Meath.