Sir – February 28th, 2025, is the day I decided to leave America because of the humiliation I witnessed by the current US president and his cohort towards Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Now, one year later to the day, that same US president has unleashed an unwarranted and unlawful war against Iran. It is the innocent who pay the price in war. The bombing of a girls’ primary school killing almost 200 young people demonstrates that international humanitarian law means nothing and offers no protection.
The billions of dollars spent on weaponry that promise pinpoint precision are a wasteful disgrace in the wake of this atrocity.
The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, is determined to go to the White House for the ceremonial St Patrick’s Day event. It appears that political survival and appeasement of a bully is the modus operandi of the head of the Irish Government.
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We humans have short memories. Neville Chamberlain was hailed as a hero for appeasing Hitler thinking he was winning “Peace for our time.” And less than a year later Hitler invaded Poland, unleashing the brutal second World War.
You don’t negotiate with bullies. The only way to send a message to a bully is to stand up to him or her. Of all the countries in the European Union, why is Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez the only one not afraid to confront Trump with his unlawful, unconstitutional aggression?
If Micheál Martin insists on visiting Trump for St Patrick’s Day, without confronting him on the unjust and illegal war he has started, he is no better than Chamberlain and makes a mockery of Ireland. Trump can’t even pronounce his first name correctly. There comes a time when political survival, and “playing nice” in the face of moral turpitude, has to be abandoned. This is the time. This is Martin’s moment. How will he be remembered? – Yours, etc,
KATHLEEN MARY NORTON,
Salthill,
Galway.
Sir, – I was afraid that President Catherine Connolly was discontinuing the now established precedent of the Irish presidency from representing the views of the Irish people when our Government refuses to do so.
The occasion of International Women’s Day was the appropriate time to denounce (March 8th) the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran and Lebanon as “deliberate assaults on international law, the international laws that have underpinned global peace for 80 years,” as it’s the innocent lives of women and children that indiscriminate war devastates the most.
If the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, is unwilling and/or afraid to confront US president Donald Trump on his attack on international law maybe he might invite Connolly to accompany him on his journey to the White House so that she can represent the Irish people by speaking truth to power and he can stick to carrying the shamrock. – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN BUTLER,
Drumcondra,
Dublin 9.
Sir, – The language being used by the US and Israel, in their depiction of the attack on Iran, is both terrifying and barbaric.
These hateful, aggressive, demeaning descriptions of any peoples, whether friend or foe, truly expose the disregard they hold for human life.
We are all being dragged into a world order of bullying, retribution, revenge and murderous intent.
It’s truly time for Ireland with Europe to alter this disastrous situation. – Yours, etc,
MARY BARRETT,
Raheny,
Dublin.
Sir, – Though not intended as a comment on the present war, the most perceptive relevant sentence in The Irish Times today (March 7th) comes in a book review in The Ticket. The reviewer, Ian Hughes, quotes author Odd Arne Westad: “Without parliaments or international organisations to hold them back, personal rulers often fail at critical moments of war or peace because they fear the perception of weakness more than they fear the consequences of war.” – Yours, etc,
HARRY McCAULEY,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.
