Madam, - Mark Steyn crosses a line in explaining the failure of the "war on terror" in Iraq (or "march of liberty" as it has now been renamed by President Bush). Not enough Iraqi Baatthists were killed, he laments; Japan, he claims, was so much better off for Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Opinion, August 1st). Isn't this the same Mark Steyn who went all dewy-eyed and sentimental over the right to life of the brain-dead American woman Terry Schiavo? Was that an example of what he calls "wicky-wacky-woo"?
It is a strange Liberty indeed that demands hecatombs of dead to facilitate its further march. Besides, Mr Steyn's proposition does not even make sense. Killing more Baathists would have entailed killing more innocent civilians. How many innocent Iraqis to equal the right to life of one brain-dead American? And killing more Baathists would only add a stronger impulse to the local vengeance that has fuelled the Iraqi imbroglio.
It is extraordinary to claim that Iraq would be better off if (for example) 50,000 had been killed instead of 25,000. It is the kind of claim Stalin might have made about one of his purges. But this is the kind of mindless death-worship that now suffuses the thinking of mainstream (if mediocre) journalists such as Mark Steyn. - Yours, etc,
TOBY JOYCE,
Navan,
Co Meath.
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Madam, - Mark Steyn, as a self-declared "fully paid-up armchair warmonger", writes approvingly of the "nuking" of Nagasaki. He does so on the basis that "the Japanese fought a filthy war" and in his opinion "it is easier to rebuild societies if they have first been smashed".
While I appreciate the fact that I have lived in a world dominated by the relatively benign influence of American imperialism, as distinct from the alternatives of Hitler's or Stalin's version, I still have problems coming to terms with the thought processes of the imperialist mind. Making decisions to annihilate hundreds of thousands of people in order to ensure that, as Mark Steyn puts it, not "too many bigshots survived to plot mischief" seems to require a frame of mind that is antithetical to the object of the exercise.
This, as I assume even Mark Steyn would agree, is forwarding the political philosophy of the American Constitution, which declares all people as being "created equal" and proclaims their "inalienable right" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Smashing societies can be a brutal business. The famine in Ireland and the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe were examples of such. Is there not a better way? - Yours, etc,
A. LEAVY,
Shielmartin Drive,
Dublin 13.
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Madam, - One phrase in Mark Steyn's column of August 1st sums up his "analysis" of the situation in Iraq: "It's easier to rebuild societies if they've first been completely smashed". In spite of himself, he makes the Vietnam comparison: in the wake of the Tet offensive, in 1968, the US forces wiped out the provincial capital of Ben Tre. An army officer told journalist Peter Arnett at the time: "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."
What good purpose is served by The Irish Times continuing to carry Mr Steyn's ignorant drivel? - Yours, etc,
CONOR McCARTHY,
De Vesci Court,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.