Letters: We failed to stop war in the Balkans, so why are we repeating this with Gaza?

Irish Independent

20 hours ago

In 2017, I visited Bosnia as part of my Erasmus programme to Croatia. In Sarajevo, I saw the bullet holes in the buildings, the fields on the edge of town lined with white unmarked pillars representing the dead. My friend and I cried in the museum that displayed the horrors of what happened there.
About 100,000 people died in the war – 80pc of those victims were Bosnian Muslims. I wondered how the conflict lasted four years. Remember, this was in the 1990s. How was there no intervention? Surely that could never happen again, we thought.
In 2025, history is repeating itself as we watch the genocide of the Palestinians, and this time there is no way to pretend we don't know what's happening – we see it on our screens every day.
In years to come, the next generation will ask why there was no intervention. Why did no one stop them? I wonder will there be anything left of Gaza and its people. How many unmarked graves will they need to represent their dead?
Aisling Brady, Drumcondra, Dublin
US should learn from the North – putting troops on the streets solves nothing
Northern Ireland's bitter experience with military deployment offers a stark warning to the US ('Troops on the streets is a chilling moment for democracy in US' – Editorial, June 12).
Soldiers are trained to confront enemies, not to police citizens. Their presence rarely calms tensions; in fact, it almost always inflames them. We had troops on the North's streets for 38 years – a 'short-term' intervention that became a ­decades-long occupation.
The recent deployment of not only the National Guard but active-duty Marines to Los Angeles – against the wishes of local officials – should trouble anyone with a concern for democracy. Sending troops to silence protest rather than address its causes does not resolve crisis. It hardens it.
As protests spread over Donald Trump's heavy-handed immigration raids, the danger of irreversible escalation grows. There are reports that ICE officers have been tasked with making 3,000 arrests a day. Putting Marines on city streets in such a context risks turning political grievance into a national trauma.
History shows us that once soldiers are deployed domestically, it becomes exponentially harder to withdraw them. As John F Kennedy warned: 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.'
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If America still values democracy, it would do well to learn from Northern Ireland's costly legacy before choosing force over dialogue. The military cannot secure the soul of a nation.
Enda Cullen, Tullysaran Road, Armagh
With their RPZ policy, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have made things worse
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil's perma-government seems incapable of understanding that endless, piecemeal and reactionary market intervention is not the answer to our housing crisis ('Entire country to be brought under Rent Pressure Zone in major change agreed by Government leaders' – June 10).
By capping rent increases everywhere, from Ballyfermot to Ballycotton, and further curtailing the rights of 'large' landlords with more than three properties, the Department of Housing will do nothing except encourage non-corporate landlords to finally bail out and put their properties up for sale.
More ads on property websites will offer short-term hope to first-time buyers seeking to get on the ladder, but only until they run up against the inexhaustible wallets of national and international vulture funds raising asking prices by tens of thousands of euro.
The rest of us will be left to contin­ue fighting over the scraps, as we have done for the best part of two decades. All the while, the Government's reluctance to reduce the swathes of taxes and regulations it has introduced, in a way that would encourage investment by developers and the return of construction workers, gets worse.
The Spanish policy that places a 100pc tax on foreign purchases of homes in that country is a rare bit of reasonable socialism that our lads won't countenance.
These new measures give a sop to louder elements who believe state micromanagement of irrelevant minutiae is the only solution to the housing crisis. Eventually, the incompetence starts to look wilful.
Killian Foley-Walsh, Kilkenny town
To those who find Pride 'irritating' – it remains just as important as ever
At a time when right-wing governments all over the world, including some within the EU, are attempting to roll back rights for LGBTQ+ people, Pride is more important than ever.
I note that Eric Conway finds it 'irritating in the extreme' (Letters, June 12). However, the annual celebration remains a vital expression of solidarity for a minority that suffered terribly at the hands of both church and state here until very recently.
Long may Pride continue.
Bernie Linnane, Dromahair, Co Leitrim
De Valera's championing of the presidency should always be remembered
I read with interest Thomas Garvey's letter on the presidency (June 11).
The writer notes in particular that Fianna Fáil has not featured in recent presidential contests, having monopolised the office for so long.
It is interesting to note that it was Éamon de Valera who created the office of president of Ireland.
He did so in the face of the most virulent opposition during the debates on the introduction of Bunreacht na hÉireann in 1937. When the Constitution was debated in the Dáil, the office of the president was the single most contentious issue.
It came up about 60 times and De Valera was accused of trying to impose a type of dictatorship along the lines of Hitler or Mussolini.
Issues such as 'the special position of the Catholic Church' and 'women in the home' were minor by comparison. As it turned out, these fears were wild exaggerations and the office has evolved into the most respected of all our political institutions.
De Valera waited until the end of his active political career before opting for the Áras – the Phoenix Park was 'the ideal paddock for the old warhorse'.
Fr Iggy O'Donovan, Thomas Street, Dublin