FRED JOHNSTON,
Sir, - Miriam Donohoe's column of September 6th was more than welcome. Rightly, she points out how we might spare a thought, in the midst of the frenzy of remembering the inexcusable atrocity of September 11th, the horror visited upon innocent men, women and children in Afghanistan and how grey, medalled men in the Pentagon have lied about it.
The dead of Afghanistan are, as she says, "the forgotten victims of September 11th". Is there an unsayable perception that, because these people are culturally "different" from us, they should not be mourned? Who can forget Madeleine Albright's infamous retort on 60 Minutes that half-a-million dead Iraqi children were, however regrettably, "worth it" if aims were achieved?
The Western media, by and large, do what they're told in these matters and toe the Western line. The concept of "otherness", of there being people whose deaths we should not trouble to mourn as we would our own - Western, white - is one of the cornerstones of imperialism. We are witnessing the rise of a new imperialism, fed by a greed for oil. Seeding this imperialism is, and must be, a formidable racism: there are those whose deaths simply do not matter because they are "different" from us. We invent anti-language to describe these: collateral damage being one of the most pornographic phrases to befoul any tongue. - Yours, etc.,
FRED JOHNSTON,
Circular Road,
Galway.
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A chara, - This week it is natural and proper to commemorate the victims of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.
But compare the media coverage of this commemoration with that of the victims of famine and war in Africa, who are dying in their thousands daily. Why the disparity? Are these lives less important? - Is mise,
ANITA McGONAGLE,
Arvough,
Kinvara,
Co Galway.