Madam, - Is all this Olympic boycott stuff not all very familiar? Didn't we have all these sentimental multiculturalist arguments for a boycott of Moscow in 1980? Weren't the airwaves filled with talk of brave Mujahideen sweeping across the desert armed with scimitars, facing down the might of Soviet tanks? Going to Moscow would be betraying these brave freedom fighters, we were told.
It was all nonsense, of course. The Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan was trying to haul the country into the 20th century by means of mass literacy for all, rich and poor, men and women. The opposition, as we now know, were feudal warlords and fundamentalists, trying to drag the country back to the middle ages. Wouldn't the world be a far better place now if the West had not backed that anti-Enlightenment opposition? Could the Taliban exist if we were now into the second and third generation of mass literacy in Afghanistan? And the Twin Towers would still be standing.
Yet here we are again, sentimentally supporting Buddhism in Tibet, ignoring the fact that Buddhist democracies are as rare as Muslim democracies, and ignoring the fact that Tibet was a brutal, feudal theocracy before the Chinese invasion. Like the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, the Chinese regime lacks democratic legitmacy, but like the Kabul regime it does believe in progress. Does anyone really believe that Tibet's monks would not re-impose feudalism if they had the power?
Impossible you say. That's what fellow-travellers of the Afghani Mujahideen thought back in 1980, yet did not the Taliban impose a regime that was extreme even by medieval standards? Do we never learn? We should value the Enlightenment as the precious thing that it is. We should ignore all that multicultural gobbledegook from the intellectual giants of Hollywood and simply denounce backward theocracy in all its forms. - Yours, etc,
T O'HALLORAN, Ferndale Road, Dublin 11.
Madam, - Your edition of April 9th quotes Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern as saying that if the Government "threw a hissy fit" and refused to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese might turn their back on us. So Mr Ahern will continue his futile diplomatic calls to the Chinese for dialogue and restraint over Tibet.
Let's face it: we are a pimple on the rear end of the world. For us the Olympics amount to little more than a major junket for our politicians, the members of the Olympic Council of Ireland and our participating athletes, who struggle to reach Olympic qualifying times and who, according to John Treacy, will be lucky to make the finals of any event.
Internationally, we flatter ourseves as having a noble tradition of neutality, standing by the oppressed and punching above our weight. So now is the time to make a stand and throw the mother of all hissy fits. It's all we have. - Yours, etc,
PÀDRAIC BREATHNACH, Gort Inse Guaire, Gaillimhe.