Madam, - Mark Steyn's comparison of the war in Iraq to the American Civil War (Opinion, May 31st) is quite inapposite. The Civil War was fought because (to borrow the words of Abraham Lincoln) "the country could no longer endure half-slave and half-free". Of course it was worth fighting, but there are wars that prove worthwhile and those that do not.
Twelve years before the Civil War, the United States fought a victorious war against Mexico. The war was the pinnacle of the "manifest destiny" creed that believed the United States was the natural ruler of North America, the Caribbean and Central America. Ulysses Grant, who led the US army during the Civil War and who had served as a young officer in Mexico, later called the Mexican War "one of the most unjust ever fought by a stronger against a weaker nation".
Abraham Lincoln damaged his political career by his moderate opposition to the war in Congress. He later came to believe that the Civil War was God's judgment on the United States not only for slavery, but also for the iniquity of the previous war. Not much "God is on our side" bravado from Old Abe, unlike his fellow Republican now in the White House. Lincoln could tell the difference between a war that needed fighting, and one that did not. Not so with George W. Bush, it seems. - Yours, etc.,
TOBY JOYCE,
Balreask Manor,
Navan,
Co Meath.