Sir, - Just when you thought that The Irish Times could not possibly sink to more puerile levels of anti-American animus, along comes Elaine Lafferty's review of Samantha Power's book A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (Books, July 6th)
As its title would suggest, this book singles out the United States as bearing the core responsibility for the numerous genocidal massacres of the 20th century because of its failure to prevent them. It focuses specifically on four: the massacre of Armenians by the Turks in 1915; of the Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge; of the Kurds by Saddam Hussein's regime; and of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda.
This reductionist thesis, simplistic past the point of being simple-minded, is precisely the sort of ideologically bent and historically illiterate bilge normally served up by a Noam Chomsky or a John Pilger and printed in some counter-cultural rag. But Ms Lafferty not only gives it her enthusiastic endorsement, she rides it like a hobby-horse in pursuit of her own obsessions. Previously, she has written that we Americans are "isolationist, ignorant, bloodthirsty maniacs". Now she says we are also "dumb and naïve".
Perhaps, then, she could explain, out of her superior historical understanding, how the United States, with a standing army in 1915 of 110,000 men, was supposed to mount a successful intervention in the heartland of the Ottoman Empire. Or is she so "dumb" she has forgotten Gallipoli?
Perhaps she could also explain how it would have been politically feasible to contemplate, in the immediate post-1975 years, a massive American invasion in Southeast Asia - or is she really that historically "naive"?
Certainly, I would not imagine her to be so naïve as to believe that she could find much of value in this connection in the back issues of The Irish Times, but if she searched the index of a responsible newspaper such as the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times, she would learn (be reminded?) that, in response to confirmation of the gassing of Kurds in Halabjah, President Reagan instructed American intelligence to find out how Saddam had acquired his chemical warfare capability. It was discovered that West German firms were responsible. In response to US protests, the West German government claimed it was all legal commercial trade, but sustained American diplomatic pressure put an end to it.
Ms Lafferty might also be expected to be aware that, thanks to the no-fly zone in the north of Iraq patrolled by American and British warplanes, the Kurds, today, are living free from Saddam's repression (except, of course, when one Kurdish faction falls out with another and invites an Iraqi incursion).
She might also be expected to have asked why there was no response to the genocide in Rwanda from that sad country's African neighbours, particularly those, such as Nigeria and South Africa, with both the military establishment and the local knowledge capable of rapid and effective intervention.
In the heel of the hunt, though, the operative question is why The Irish Times continues to print such pieces. - Yours, etc.,
G.T. DEMPSEY,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.