Sir - A most spectacular war campaign! Six weeks of bombing. B52s pounding the Taliban lines. Carpet bombing and then executions and ransacking by the ragtag Alliance. As a Christian country, what should our response be to the terrifying bombardment of city after city in Afghanistan which we see on our screens nightly? We haven't so far witnesssed any noisy scenes in the houses of the Oireachtas in protest against the military excesses of the US cluster bombs and "daisy-cutters".
The humanitarian consequences for the Afghan population must give us pause: 5 million facing starvation, warnings of child deaths by UNICEF, refugees pouring into Pakistan.
As Dr A. Mahmud rightly states (November 22nd), we may now need a war to "save ourselves from US imperialism". Bombing may seem to work in the short term but the political consequences will be disastrous. - Yours, etc.
John F. Fallon, Boyle, Co Roscommon.