Madam, - In his article on the Iraq war (Opinion, March 6th), Tom Wright quoted with approval the words of Kenneth Pollack to the effect that "deterrence and invasion might have been roughly equal", but invasion was better because it removed a real evil from the world.
I think Wright and Pollack are convicted by their own evidence, because in a liberal democratic state, if the cases are equal, then the decision should always be against war. Otherwise, a chauvinistic or belligerent minority can unduly influence a finely balanced decision, and that seems to be exactly what happened in this case.
War usually brings in its wake a flood of evils unseen by those making the decision, so caution is always the better option. It is quite inane of Mr Wright to claim that "the terrorist bubble has burst", since Iraq had no proven connection with Al-Qaeda. It seems to me that terrorism has not diminished since the end of the war. On the contrary, it has markedly increased in Israel, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, and in Iraq itself.
It is plain that the evil suffered by Iraq is not over, and it will become clear that it was better this war had never been started. - Yours, etc.,
TOBY JOYCE, Balreask Manor, Navan, Co Meath.
Madam, - In a Dáil exchange last Tuesday Bertie Ahern indirectly referred to those who marched against the Iraq war as "rent a crowd". He obviously finds it hard to believe that those who marched might have been influenced by moral and ethical principles.
We should not be surprised by that. Mr Ahern, after all, has spent most of his life immersed in post-1960s Fianna Fáil, an organisation singularly lacking in principles of any kind.
In his own political career Mr Ahern has ably demonstrated that the main principle in which he is interested is that of self-preservation. - Yours, etc.,
ALAN McPARTLAND, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.