Madam, - The case of the American soldiers who raped a 14-year-old girl and murdered her and her parents and little sister struck me as a prime example of why people didn't want this or any war to start and of why, after a war, people say: "Never again" (The Irish Times, February 24th).
It is not because we don't want a particular dictator to be removed, but because war produces human behaviour at its ugliest. One of the soldiers said in court he could not say what possessed him to do this terrible crime; he might have never done anything so evil had he not been put in a situation of dealing with the rawest emotions, with anarchy, lawlessness, fear, hate, as a young, unprepared man.
War is not about a superpower flexing its muscles and trying out new weapons in a fast attack; it's about broken people, who lost children and brothers, who lost their homes and work, their infrastructure and economy, who have been insulted and tortured. They will take at least a generation to start to recover from it. But we are quick to forget as the next conflict arrives. - Yours, etc,
JORINDE ROLSMA,
Oakfield Place,
Dublin 8.