Have Bush’s critics learnt anything?
I wonder if those opposing the actions in Iraq have learnt anything from history. I am not a young man and have lived through many of the direst things that have happened in this world.
After World War 1 the League of Nations was set up to ensure that this would be the end of war.
But the league was totally ineffective as Mussolini bombed the innocents of Ethiopia and the democratically elected government of Spain was downtrodden by a fascist dictator.
As World War II loomed the extreme left went on the march in protest while trade unions called for disarmanent and for workers not to fight each other. They condemned Winston Churchill as a warmonger just as they condemn George W Bush today.
After World War II the United Nations was established to try again where the league had failed. But what have we got? An inept talking shop, passing resolutions that are not acted upon, so that tyrants still prosper.
To take a few more recent examples, we have witnessed the genocide in Rwanda, the oppression of the Timorese and now Sudan.
Where was the UN? Talking and passing resolutions, but doing nothing. At the end of the war in Kuwait, when the coalition forces had Saddam on the run, George Bush Snr and the allies were stopped by the UN because the resolution was only to get him out of Kuwait.
Instead they proposed sanctions that resulted in 12 years of suffering for ordinary Iraqis.
Over the past year Iraq has seen the return of nearly one million refugees after years in exile. As Heydar-al-Ayyari, an Iraqi politician, said: "We have water and fertile land, we have oil and a hardworking people. What we lacked was freedom. Now that we have freedom we can surge ahead."
When this war started I asked myself one question: if I had to choose a regime governed by the US or by Islamic fundamentalists, which would I choose?
I found it very easy to answer.
Clifford O'Hanlon,
Kilconnor,
Shanballymore,
Co Cork.
