Sir, – When my wife and I visited Ireland in September, just about any conversation with friends and folks we had just met turned to questions about our midterm elections.
We hadn’t realised just how closely people there were following what was going on and how genuinely concerned you all were. And we have heard already from several friends who are genuinely sharing our joy over the results. And I have told them what I have told my friends here, we should look to Ireland now in the aftermath of our years of “Trump trauma.”
America’s experience in the difficult years of Trump in no way approaches what you all have endured in the last century where friends and family fought side-by-side and on opposite sides in the Irish Civil War and the Troubles,
But Trump has divided families and many of us no longer speak to former friends with whom we once shared the same values. You somehow have found a way to the other side of your awful times. Not that you have forgotten or, in some situations, forgiven the past. And we are not so Pollyannaish that we don’t recognise remnants of the Troubles remain.
RM Block
But what we find in our visits to Ireland are people who have moved on, displaying kindness, and laughter that seem almost infectious. Those are the traits we Americans must display in moving on from the horrific damage inflicted in the Trump years.
Thank you for showing it can be done. We look forward to sharing laughter with you again soon.- Yours, etc,
STEPHEN GADSTONE,
Cleveland,
Ohio.
Sir, – US president Donald Trump asked the American people to vote as if his name was on the ballot paper, and that’s exactly what they did, in great numbers.
Turns out the Emperor had no clothes after all. – Yours, etc,
BATTIE WHITE,
Sandyford,
Dublin.
Sir, – David Woods is of the view that the Republican losses in the midterm elections arose because Donald Trump did not pursue the war with Iran with the “required vigour and ruthlessness once begun”, (Letters, November 6th).
On February 28th, the opening day of the US-Israel war with Iran, 120 schoolchildren and 35 adults were killed as a result of a US military strike on a primary school in the city of Minab. The UN educational agency, Unesco, described the bombing as “constituting a grave violation of humanitarian law”.
Accordingly, I am at a loss to understand how it can be concluded that, in the war with Iran, Trump has displayed an “undue respect for international law”. – Yours, etc,
MARTIN McDONALD,
Terenure,
Dublin 12.
