Sir, – Micheál Mac Donncha (Letters, August 31st) wants to characterise the IRA's 30-year campaign of mass killings as a conflict. That word implies that the other side had the capacity to fight back, or at least to defend itself.
This idea is made a nonsense of when one considers the ordinary men, women and children who were simply going about their normal business when Remembrance Day in Enniskillen was bombed; when the centre of Omagh was obliterated; or when civilian contractors were executed and their bodies dumped on the Border because they had the temerity to offer their services to entities that the IRA regarded as “legitimate targets”.
Playing with words now will not absolve the IRA, or its apologists, of responsibility for what Fintan O’Toole has rightly called the disaster that Sinn Féin helped inflict on the Irish people.
– Yours, etc,
:fill(white):background_color(white)/static.themebuilder.aws.arc.pub/irishtimes/1647534191476.png)
SEAMUS McKENNA
Windy Arbour,
Dublin 14.