Madam, - This Iraq crisis is changing the world in which we live for a long time to come.
It now seems clear that the British realise that they have made a huge strategic error. The sight of the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia, together and at one with each other, tells a new story. It is no secret that in the past France would not even entertain the thought of Russia joining the European Union. For my part, I have always felt since my first visit to Russia (a long time ago) that it was intrinsically European.
It is my guess that the British now realise that the French and German position has changed, that Russia is now on its way to an "ever closer union" with France and Germany. At this late hour the British, already disadvantaged by not being in the euro zone, are faced with a huge challenge.
They must stop unilateral action by the Americans, build the international coalition that the United States has failed to build, and prevent France, Germany and Russia from forming the foundation of the world's second superpower in an enlarged European Union.
Quite a task for Tony Blair. Even the Northern Ireland problem starts to look easy by comparison. - Yours, etc.,
DESMOND WHITE, Beaufort Downs, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.
Madam, - John Waters (Opinion, March 3rd) seems very sure he knows what really motivates the protesters against the threatened US/UK attack on Iraq: our fear of being targeted for reprisals. As far as I am concerned he is wrong.
I didn't see any "Trotskyist demagogues" in recent weeks: this kind of invective is just silly. It is an insult to the intelligence and the moral courage of the millions who protested around the world to suggest that their motive is fear for themselves. It is insulting and untrue to refer to Saddam Hussein as the "mascot of the anti-war movement" and inaccurate to refer to Bush and Blair as the "leaders of the Free World".
The democratic world has spoken in massive opposition to the proposed slaughter, in our collective name, of tens of thousands of civilians and conscript soldiers. This is neither an immoral nor an anti-American position. It is shared by very many Americans, who are themselves uneasy at the possible consequences of a reckless policy of pre-emptive strikes against a variety of real and imagined enemies of the "West" around the world. If the US adopts a policy of getting its retaliation in first, what is to stop others from getting their retaliation in even sooner? The result could only be a cycle of ever more disastrous destabilisation.
September 11th may indeed have been a unique and brilliantly thought-out act of evil, but its only connection with Saddam Hussein's Iraq is that it has been used as a pretext by a clique of fundamentalist zealots on the far right of the US Republican Party to pursue an agenda which they had already drawn up: control of international oil and the imposition by force of US global domination. Public opinion is not taken in by the claims of these people to a concern for rights; hence the protests.
Saddam's Iraq, which I have visited, has rightly been called the Republic of Fear. That did not stop Irish politicians and Irish meat barons beating a path to Saddam's door in the past. But there is another fear, felt by millions outside our cossetted world. It is fear of the "West" itself, of a "civilisation" which ruthlessly pursues its own goals and which time and again breaks its own proclaimed standards of human rights and respect for life.
It is the daily fear of Palestinians who know they can be slaughtered with impunity by a regime which is held to represent "Western values" in that part of the world. It is the fear of millions whose environments, standards of living and security have been destroyed by Western interference and global capital. - Yours, etc.,
PIARAS MAC ÉINRÍ, Director, Irish Centre for Migration Studies, National University of Ireland, Cork.