LETTER: Cooling America's outrage

From Mr Richard Sockett

Sir: In calling for a political response to a murderous attack in America's heartland, your leader (21 April) warns against rash military action should the evidence point towards a foreign government. An admirable sentiment, but precedent suggests that immediate sabre-rattling, or worse, would be seized upon in Washington.

Whatever the motivation, nothing could excuse what was inflicted on Oklahoma, but if any good could derive from indiscriminate murder, it might be a recognition by ordinary Americans that such contempt for innocent life remains the brutal (and scarcely newsworthy) routine in many parts of the world. And that any kind of retaliatory, Libyan-style raid is only destined to create more innocent suffering.

As lone superpower and occasional world policeman, US policy - from Central America to the Middle East and the Gulf - has done little to suggest that concern for human rights ranks above economic and political expedience in the "New World Order". Easy, then, to understand the qualified sympathy offered by the ordinary people of Beirut.

If this ending of American "innocence" modifies a few perspectives in Washington, the long-term solution will be that much closer.

Yours faithfully,

RICHARD SOCKETT

London, N22