Moral issues

Thankfully your editorial, “World must not let Egypt turn into another Algeria” 
(17 August) raises an issue often played down in discussions of global politics.

Egypt’s bloody political and ideological conflict reveals the importance of the “moral dimension” in foreign relations.

A crucial issue raised in your editorial is whether the United States ought to continue sending military aid.

Arguably it is a moral issue whether the US ought to have been supplying military aid in the first place.

Moreover, it isn’t first and foremost about the issue of oil supplies and prices at the pumps.

Perhaps this is a graphic instance of what Benjamin Spock pointed out during the Vietnam War.

The worst problems are caused not by lack of knowledge or means but by “moral blindness or confusion”.

Ellis Thorpe

Inverurie