LETTERS Libyan barbarities
Sir: How odd that Ferdinand Mount (Poli- tics, 19 April) should compare Napier's expedition to Magdala in 1867 with the recent US air-raid on Libya. Odder still that he should suggest that today's Ethio- pians still brood over the 'scars' of the campaign. By the same argument, the peoples of south-east Asia must still burn With resentment against the Royal Navy's elimination of piracy from their waters in the 1840s and 1850s and the North Africans lament the extirpation of the Barbary corsairs 30 years before. Are we to suppose that the Magdala hostages were to be left where they were, the pirates allowed to flourish and the slavers of East Africa and the Persian Gulf to continue their busi- ness?
International 'policing' by the powers who were technically capable of the action was, in the long term, beneficial. If Ferdi- nand Mount wishes to uphold tergiversa- tion and appeasement by the US or Bri- tain, he should not try and justify his position by a recourse to history, particu- larly the history of successful efforts by a great power to advance international sta- bility and order.
Lawrence James
Headmistress's House, Queen Ethelburga's School, Harrogate, North Yorkshire
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