War not futile when it fights tyranny

SO, Phil Garner thinks it is ridiculous to compare the objectives of the West’s intervention in Afghanistan with the Second World War and states we shouldn’t get involved in other people’s arguments (“Warfare is costly and futile waste of life”, September 16) .

Well, Hitler was looking to start a war and we did all we could to stay out of it. I’m sure Mr Garner remembers Chamberlain waving his bit of paper, and we carried on appeasing Hitler until we had no choice but to confront him.

He also gives the United States’ intervention in Vietnam as an example of folly. At that time America was gripped by fear of communism, with the Iron Curtain coming down over half of Europe.

After the Cuban missile crisis that almost brought about a nuclear war, it feared the so-called domino effect in that area. Intervention in Iraq was in response to Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait for its oil fields.

He was pushed back, but not before Iraq set the oil fields alight.

We left straight afterwards and that cost the lives of thousands of Iraqis. Mr Garner also gives the second Gulf war as an example of folly, but which nation would turn the other cheek after Iraq killed more than 3,000 innocent Kurds years earlier?

For someone who accuses Brexiteers of being racist, he shows very little empathy but a lot of apathy for people being butchered and downtrodden.

Alan Byrne, Ripley