Madam, - Please allow me to express my disgust at James Moran's ignorant and offensive attack on Remembrance Sunday (November 20th). His claim that war is never necessary is ill-informed, simplistic, naïve balderdash.
It was the people remembered in those ceremonies who liberated victims of fascism from the Holocaust. Without war, millions more Jews, gays, gypsies, Poles and the handicapped would have been slaughtered by Nazism. If Europe deserves criticism on the issue of the second World War, it is that it did not wage war sooner, while leaders such as Pope Pius XII were not vocal enough in telling the world about the slaughter of the innocents taking place in concentration camps.
War should always be a last resort. Used wrongly, as it was by Bush and Blair in Iraq, it can do untold damage, in this case plunging a state into chaos where non-military actions could have allowed the controlled removal of Saddam though internal action by the Iraqis themselves. Used sparingly where necessary, war can save lives and protect vast numbers of people and their societies from destruction.
I will continue every Easter Week to commemorate the role played by a paternal grand-uncle of mine in fighting to achieve independence for this country. And, as I have done for over a decade, every Remembrance Sunday I will continue to stand in St Patrick's Cathedral wearing my poppy to honour the sacrifice of a maternal grand-uncle.
Without the actions of many of the men and women commemorated in that ceremony, Nazism could have triumphed and friends of mine who are Jewish, or gay, or disabled, or Polish, or who fell foul of hate-filled Nazi dogma, could have been targeted for extermination in later decades also.
We were lucky to have brave men and women willing to risk their own lives to halt evil. - Yours, etc,
JIM DUFFY,
Glasnevin,
Dublin 11.