Madam, - The premature glee of your right-wing scribe Mr Steyn must have turned rapidly to dejection and I suppose, a fair degree of insipidity in his morning cornflakes last week, as his hyperbolic predictions about developments in Lebanon dissolved into a reality quite different from that which he was proposing to your readers.
Not for the first time, the cartoon version of history and politics regularly peddled by your correspondent didn't stand up to the real events occurring in the Middle East. The irony (an abstract concept not well understood by most residents of the North American continent, indigenous natives excepted) of his Action Man hero, GW Bush, proclaiming to the world that countries could not have free and fair elections under foreign occupation, while the brutalised US forces shoot to kill not only unfortunate Iraqi civilians but supposedly friendly allies as well, will not be lost on the Irish people, other Europeans and the entire Islamic world.
When his favourite pin-up girl, Condoleezza Rice, was traipsing around the foreign ministries of Europe recently, she also put her chips on raucous street demonstrations allegedly favouring her and her boss's line as the new world order. She got a cold reception as she, an unelected appointee of a chief executive of dubious electoral and political pedigree, attempted to lecture elected leaders of Europe on what their countries' foreign policies should be. While Ms Rice was lecturing in Europe about human rights and liberty, it was business as usual for the fawning US ally Colombia, with trade union officials and indigenous community leaders murdered in their homes and workplace, along with their three-year-old and five-year-old children, by the massively US-subsidised Colombian Armed Forces.
We also saw, only days ago, the appalling pictures of foremost US Nato ally Turkey allowing its police to baton women and children off the streets when they attempted to demonstrate peacefully on International Women's Day. Defenders of Liberty how are you!
Previous US interventions in Lebanon were unmitigated disasters, though nothing like the scale of the disaster in Iraq, and the current bungling effort is going the same way. The "Bush was right" bandwagon has lost all its wheels after only one week on the road. - Yours, etc.,
SEAMUS RATIGAN, Dublin 8.
Madam, - "Time for Irish lefties to admit George Bush was right", was the headline on Mark Steyn's column of March 7th.
I thought it was generally accepted across all spectrums of political opinion that President Bush was as right as it is possible to get without actually sporting an armband. I've even heard it rumoured he ghost-writes Mr Steyn's column when the Oval Office gets too quiet. - Yours, etc.,
D FLINTER, Tullyvoheen, Clifden, Co Galway.