Sir, - Congratulations to John Pilger for his perceptive and most informative article on the Yugoslavian debacle (The Irish Times, March 27th). All other journalists should follow his excellent example and deal in the facts of the situation rather than parroting US/UK propaganda claptrap.
Humanitarianism has no part whatever in the formulation of US foreign policy. If it did, action against Turkey, Burma, Zaire and Indonesia would have been taken long ago.
The United States has no intention of relinquishing its position as the most powerful country in the world. This being so, it is essential for it that everything possible be done to destabilise the European Union which has had the temerity to resist its bully-boy tactics over the Helms/Burton Bill, the banana war and now the beef hormone battle.
There is very little difference between the conflict in Northern Ireland and that in Yugoslavia. Yet, both the US and the UK governments have condemned the use of the "bomb and bullet" to resolve the problems in Northern Ireland while, at the same time, using exactly those tactics to resolve the crisis in Yugoslavia. A case of "don't do as I do, do as I say"?
I do not believe in reincarnation but every time I see the faces of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright, the images of America's two legendary murderers, gangsters Al Capone and Ma Baker, flash across my mind. Could it possibly be, I wonder? - Yours, etc., W. G. A. Scott,
Friar's Hill, Wicklow.