Madam, - I usually feel neutral about Mark Steyn's column, but this week he surely has written one of his most foolish pieces ever (Opinion, November 3rd). Apparently, he thinks it is the job of American Democrats like Ted Kennedy to come up with plans for the occupation of Iraq.
Personally, I thought that was the job of the Bush Administration. It is the task of the opposition to criticise the working (or in this case, not-working) of the plan.
There are many people like me who supported the American invasion of Iraq on the condition that it was swift and terminal in its execution. Accompanying this was the trepidation that Bush and his team would not succeed. For a while it seemed they had, but we reckoned without the incompetence of the neo-conservatives.
We should have known better. These are the same people who botched the ending of the Cold War. Instead of a democratic Russia, which would have been a real achievement in state building comparable to the democratisation of Germany and Japan, that country is now in the power of the authoritarian ex-KGB man Vladimir Putin. Donald Rumsfeld always thought glasnost was a Commie trick, and Dick Cheney notoriously supported leaving Nelson Mandela in jail. Far from being neo-anything, these are really just Cold War dogs with no new tricks.
The settlement of Afghanistan is worsening with every week, Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are still at large, ruthless dictators reign in Central Asia, and the neo-conservative promise that "the road to Jerusalem lies through Baghdad" has been exposed as arrant nonsense.
Steyn would be better served going after the really guilty men - not Kennedy, Dean, Kerry or Clark but Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who have sent their soldiers into an exposed salient where they can be picked off at will. The heaviest irony is that while none of the latter served in Vietnam, they criticised the US government subsequently for having no "exit strategy".
What's the exit strategy now, I wonder? I suspect an Iraqi Putin will be the eventual option, ruling over a fractious and fractured country. That pill may leave a very bitter taste with the people who were promised a "peaceful and democratic" Middle East. - Yours, etc.,
TOBY JOYCE,
Navan,
Co Meath.
Madam, - Donald Rumsfeld's description of the continued US military occupation of Iraq in terms of a "long, hard war" is ominous and frightening. Even the spiralling US death toll does not deter him from predicting "further tragic days" (The Irish Times, November 3rd).
It is painfully obvious that the US presence in Iraq lacks moral credibility and authority in the eyes of Iraqi people. However, Mr Rumsfeld and his coterie in the Bush Administration believe that authority comes from the barrel of an M-16 and that ultimate success will be achieved in the Middle East through a "long hard war".
In the meantime the international silence on this amoral ideology which dominates US foreign policy is shameful and implicates the international community in the the continued spiral of violence that is dominating Iraqi life. - Yours, etc.,
BRENDAN BUTLER,
NGO Peace Alliance,
Phibsboro Road,
Dublin 7.