Sir, - I am amazed that so many people write to your newspaper with the na∩ve view that a refusal to retaliate will somehow avert further terrorist attacks. They should look at their history books. In the same way that Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler made the aggressor more confident, failure to respond to this atrocity will signal weakness to these terrorists. In addition, the United States, by turning the other cheek, would leave itself open to attack from every terrorist group that wants to advance its viewpoint.
This was not an attack on just the United States - I believe, at the last count, over 60 countries had lost citizens. What does one hope to attain by a peaceful protest against this type of terrorism? These fanatics do cannot be reasoned with. Their is to destroy the Western way of life - they just happen to have started in the United States. As someone who travels throughout the United States on a weekly basis, I can assure Sinead McEneaney (September 25th) that the type of protests she describes are very limited and cannot be compared to the protests of the Vietnam era. There is a great difference between a war against communism in a far-off country that most Americans cared little about and an attack on their mainland.
Nobody likes a war, but it is sometimes justified. - Yours, etc.,
Noel Connolly, Houston, Texas, USA.