Israel’s ‘spin’
From Alex Bigham
Sir: Douglas Davis has clearly been spun a good line by some Israeli military analysts if he thinks the Israeli threat to use nuclear bombs against Iran is more than that — a ruse to scare Iran into returning to the diplomatic table (‘Israel will do whatever it takes’, 6 January).
Iran’s nuclear sites are not a small, isolated reactor like Osiraq was in 1981; they are widespread, well-defended, near urban areas, and many are buried deep underground. After Israel’s failure to destroy Hezbollah last summer, does it really have the stomach to take on a country of 70 million, with an army of over half a million, without the support of the Americans?
If the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons (and this has not been proven by the IAEA), the ‘point of no return’ will not be in 2007. Iran’s co-operation with the IAEA, albeit sluggish, gives the IAEA the ability to monitor any moves toward a nuclear weapon. Most intelligence estimates suggest that it will not be for at least five years, or even a decade. Even if it were two years away, there is still time for diplomacy.
Despite being oil- and gas-rich, Iran does have a legitimate need for nuclear power (as well as a right to develop it under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Recent reports of a financial crisis in both the electricity and hydrocarbon industries show that Iran will face major blackouts during 2007, because of spiralling demand, to say nothing of the environmental and economic benefits of nuclear over burning fossil fuels.
A military strike which simply targeted the nuclear facilities would not only increase popular support for the ayatollahs, but would boost Israel’s nemesis Ahmadinejad. In addition, Iran could respond in a way which would be devastating for the region and damaging to Israel’s security, with increased support for Hezbollah and Hamas.
Israel is, of course, entirely justified in condemning a regime which rhetorically seeks its annihilation and makes outrageous claims about the Holocaust. However, it is in Israel’s best interest to show the kind of restraint it did when Saddam launched Scud missiles on to her territory in the first Gulf war.
Alex Bigham
Foreign Policy Centre, London N1
From Michael Judd
Sir: I applaud Douglas Davis’s article in the issue of 6 January. An Israeli strike on Iran would be a great deal more effective than anything the Americans can do. Have we not had enough of the Americans bombing from 30,000ft (usually missing the target) and then having ongoing political problems (Afghanistan and Iraq and today Somalia)? Israel would at least get the job done.
Michael Judd
Nice, France
More on More
From Sir Rowland Whitehead Bt
Sir: Julian Brazier puts the case for Thomas More (Letters, 6 January). May I respond?
In the clash between two passionate men, More poured seething, and at times almost scatological, venom on Tyndale; the latter replied always in measured and reasonable terms. He was that sort of man. Tyndale’s aim can in no way be seen as tyrannical; it was a humble desire to provide the ordinary man and woman, the ‘ploughboy and the girl who does the washing up’, with a knowledge of the Scripture that they were then denied. He did his work at great personal risk.
Whether More wrote great poetry or might have produced a great Bible in English I leave others to discuss. Shakespeare was undoubtedly influenced by Tyndale. What we do know is that the English we speak today, our glorious and incomparable language, traces directly back to William Tyndale. The King James Bible, 80 per cent Tyndale, is a bedrock of our present English.
Indeed, both men met their deaths bravely. Tyndale, however, thought not of his predicament but of others’. ‘Lord open the King of England’s eyes.’ So ‘let there be light’ on this matter and, at this time of the year let us ‘eat, drink and be merry’ in the honour of a very great man.
Rowland Whitehead
Chiswick, London W4
From Professor Eamon Duffy
Sir: Rod Liddle’s well-warranted celebration of the vigour, beauty and influence of Tyndale’s magnificent translation of the Bible understandably phases into a diatribe against Tyndale’s fiercest critic, Thomas More (‘The English Bible has made us’, 16/23 December). But Mr Liddle has let his heart run away with his head. More could not possibly have ‘put a few hundred’ Protestants ‘to their excruciating deaths’. Precisely six Protestants were burned in England for their beliefs during More’s chancellorship, and he was directly involved in the pursuit and examination of just three of the six — James Bainham, Richard Bayfield and John Tewkesbury. More was also responsible for the arrest of the Protestant book-dealer George Constantine, who, however, escaped to Antwerp. Sir Thomas certainly detested heresy, and had no sympathy for those who went to the stake rather than recant, but his major contribution to Henry VIII’s campaign against heresy was as the organiser of a series of dawn raids on London merchants’ houses in pursuit of contraband books. Few of us nowadays relish book-burnings any more than people-burnings, but the facts are a good deal less lurid than Mr Liddle imagines.
Eamon Duffy
Magdalene College, Cambridge
Hope for Iraq
From Dr Duncan Anderson
Sir: Correlli Barnett (Letters, 6 January) declares William Shawcross deluded and the Prime Minister deranged. They are, apparently, the only people left in Britain who believe the Iraq intervention to be anything other than a disaster. Not quite. I served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, living and working with some 3,000 Iraqis, both Shiite and Sunni, helping train the Iraqi army. Helping the Iraqis train their own soldiers should receive the highest priority — in time they will do it by themselves. Barnett dismisses Shawcross’s suggestions for increasing the training missions as ‘sheer fantasy’. Where, he asks, are the additional American and British soldiers to come from? At the moment there are 140,000 US troops in Iraq. Fewer than 4,000 are involved in training missions, but this small number has had real success. Trebling or even quadrupling this number would not, as Barnett asserts, stretch manpower ‘to the very limit, if not beyond’. This relatively small investment would yield great returns, as Washington officials are arguing at this very moment.
Yes, life today in Iraq is uncertain, and it is hard, but there is hope. Under Saddam and the Baath regime there was none. To simply walk away, as Barnett would have us do, would be to invite disaster of unimaginable proportions. Shawcross says that we must stay the course, and he is right. It will cost lives — British, American and Iraqi — but if a stable, prosperous Iraq emerges, they will not have died in vain.
Duncan Anderson
Head of War Studies, Royal Military Academy,
Sandhurst
From Richard Snailham
Sir: I may be an economic thicko, and I don’t wish to detract from William Shawcross’s hopeful article (30 December), but doesn’t the fact that the Iraqi dinar has moved from D1,410 to D1,480 to the dollar mean that it is decreasing in value, not increasing?
Richard Snailham
Windsor, Berkshire
No Olympic mosque
From Martyn Hurst
Sir: I enjoyed Irfan al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz’s article on the proposed new mosque for London (‘Ken’s mega-mosque will encourage extremism’, 6 January). After Britain has happily been a Christian-based society for a thousand years, I am appalled that in less than a generation such faith and tradition can be trampled on in the cause of ‘pluralism’ and a ‘multi-cultural society’. Imagine the outcry if a Christian group attempted to push through a vast new cathedral in Jeddah, Kabul, Islamabad or Baghdad. (Not that that would happen, of course; we Christians are penniless at best, and tightfisted to boot.) But the very thought of even giving consideration to such a prospect as this vast mosque, adjacent to what is destined to be a pinnacle of British hope and optimism, our London Olympic stadium, makes me shudder. Thank you, Irfan al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz, and The Spectator, for bringing it to our attention. Now let’s make sure we stop it happening.
Martyn Hurst
Vale of Glamorgan
Slavery figures
From Ted Nevill
Sir: An interesting piece on the modern slave trade by Fraser Nelson (Politics, 30 December) was spoilt by uncritical use of police statistics. The police claim that four in five prostitutes come from overseas, but when they raid 300 brothels in Kent they find two dozen women suspected of being trafficked. Assuming each brothel had at least two women working there, this is four in every hundred. The idea that the police exaggerate is supported by the Home Office’s estimate that there could be ‘only’ 4,000 victims of trafficking. There must be tens of thousands working in the sex industry if there are 300 brothels in Kent alone.
Ted Nevill
Beith, Ayrshire
Care for the dying
From Dr Andrew Lawson
Sir: Charles Moore seeks to perpetuate the myth of a ‘death threat’ for seriously ill patients when going into hospital, alluding to the supposed widespread practice of withholding fluids from sick patients (The Spectator’s Notes, 30 December). As a doctor and a (lapsed) Catholic, I would state unequivocally that there are times when administering fluids to a dying patient is morally wrong and medically futile.
Moore’s insinuation that the medical profession would stop giving fluids to someone when the administration of such fluids would either relieve their suffering or save their life is as insulting as it is poorly informed. Some severely demented patients in the terminal stages of their disease are unable to drink or eat and are often semiconscious, and it is debatable whether they have any sense of thirst or hunger. The British Medical Journal has published evidence to show that inserting feeding tubes through the stomach wall into such patients increased distress in some and required the use of restraints to stop the patients pulling the tubes out. Other studies have indicated that there may be no increase in life expectancy or even that the procedure may cause significant complications. It’s clear, then, that to withhold fluids from a dying patient is not the same as starving a healthy adult to death.
The declaration on Euthanasia of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated that those in the medical profession should ‘neglect no means of making all their skill to the sick and dying but that they should also remember how much more necessary it is to provide them with the comfort of boundless kindness and heartfelt charity’. The substitution of technology for care is in some cases quite inappropriate and probably less important than showing kindness. If anybody should understand how inappropriate hydration or feeding by artificial means might be under certain circumstances, it should be Catholics, for whom death opens the door to immortal life.
Dr Andrew Lawson
Consultant in Pain Medicine and Anaesthesia,
Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading
The pots of the palace
From Paulo Lowndes Marques
Sir: I was amused to see in Bevis Hillier’s review of a book on euphemisms that chamber pots used to be described as ‘articles’ by journalists (Books, 16/23 December). It reminded me of the Churchill story where the great man was listening to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lamentations on the expense of running Lambeth Palace. ‘Imagine, it has 50 bedrooms,’ complained the Archbishop. To which Churchill replied, ‘Ah, but only 39 Articles’.
Paulo Lowndes Marques
Lisbon, Portugal
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