Madam, - We are by now all well aware of Kevin Myers's mastery in juggling concepts such as legality, morality, legal illegality and even the morality of mortality with respect to his commentaries on the US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. However, Mr Myers seems to have reached new heights in this performance art in his tasteless, almost triumphant dancing on the grave of Capt James Kelly (An Irishman's Diary, August 7th).
Mr Myers is righteously dismayed at Capt Kelly's disobeying of his oath of allegiance in "illegally" supplying arms to a group that were in disloyal opposition to the Constitution of Ireland. Was this not the same Constitution that, until the ratification of the Good Friday Agreement, for decades boldly and "legally" claimed as her citizens those whom Capt Kelly sought to arm and protect?
Perhaps history should judge, in accordance with the Nuremberg interpretation of the same, on the "moral and legal validity" of the inactivity of the Irish Government of that era and in so doing exonerate Capt Kelly from, among other things, Mr Myers's sickening insinuation that he was in some way accountable for even a single life of the 3,500 who died over 25 years of bloodshed on, lest we forget, Irish soil "legally" laid claim to by the Constitution of Ireland. - Yours, etc.,
KEVIN BARRINS, Knocklyon, Dublin 16.
