US uses more than mere ‘arm-twisting’

BILL HURLEY, Lt Col, US Marine Corps (retd) describes the CIA rendition through Shannon as just a bit of ‘arm-twisting’ and suggests this type of torture is OK (Irish Examiner letters, June 13). He is much too selective with his facts.

Those who love humanity, who don’t hate Americans, and who have studied history, are pleased air carriers will no longer bring troops through Shannon. There is no luck in blood money.

Lt Col Hurley’s list of attacks by ‘them’ against ‘us’ or the US, amounts to about 5,000 fatalities, all of which were unjustified terrorist murders. This compares to 16,900 criminal murders in the US in 2005 alone (Irish Examiner, June 13).

While the US did help defend humanity against German and Japanese crimes in World War II, the US has been engaged in wars against the majority of our world’s people since about 1950, ably abetted by its alter-ego, the USSR, and their proxy client regimes throughout the Cold War.

The claims that the US was defending democracy and freedom were disproved throughout Latin America, especially Chile in 1973, or in Africa where the US supported apartheid in South Africa and Mobutu in the Congo. Millions were killed in a multitude of avoidable wars in which the US was directly or indirectly complicit, for example:

* 1950-53: more than three million of our Korean people killed;

* 1963-75: more than four million of our people killed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos;

* 1950-90: up to one million of our people killed in Central and Southern America;

* 1960-90: up to two million of our African people killed in Cold War proxy wars, or related neo-colonial wars;

* 1980s: up to two million of our people killed in Iran/Iraq war and USSR/Afghan war, both supported by US arms and money.

Vietnam saw large-scale use of napalm, Agent Orange and carpet bombing. More recently, in Afghanistan and Iraq, they used daisy cutter bombs which decapitate anyone within a square mile of their target area. Almost one million US troops have passed through Shannon airport during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in 2001 and from 2003 to date.

While US-caused deaths are far fewer than the death tolls attributed to Stalin and Mao, it is clear that war is a dreadful way to make peace. Making peace by peaceful means, and loving all our neighbours, including our American cousins, is a better alternative.

Edward Horgan

Newtown

Castletroy

Co Limerick