Some of Richard Galustian’s statements (‘Tragedy of two Libyas’, January 9) deserve comment, lest he thinks everybody agrees with them.

He claims Iraq’s invasion bred the new hyper-terrorist. Al-Qaeda’s killing of 3,000 people in New York preceded Iraq’s invasion and al-Qaeda was around at least a decade before the New York atrocity.

Iraq’s invasion failed to produce a functioning democratic country because, like many other Arab states, its people are incapable, as yet, to run a country without dictatorship.

Even worse, they are now engaged in a terrible civil and religious war across the Middle East between Shia and Sunni factions.

It is so much easier blaming the West for these disasters rather than the lack of belief in freedom of expression, equality of women and in freedom of religious belief and in respect for minorities, that is endemic in these societies.

Galustian also seems to ridicule the Blair administration’s breakthrough in the Northern Ireland conflict by talking to the IRA and managing to bring former IRA activists into the administration of the province. I wonder what security analyst Galustian’s solution would have been?

Libya is now being torn apart by civil war and he seems to largely blame it on the West, apparently forgetting that the West intervened to avoid a genocide in Benghazi and then helped Libyans get rid of Muammar Gaddafi.

However, Libyans have no institutions to run an organised country. They need external help to try and get the warring factions to talk to each other and to try and prevent Libya becoming a failed State run by murderers. Galustian is scathing of the UN’s efforts at mediation and favours military action. I cannot see the US, whose ambassador was murdered in Libya, or other Western countries, taking any sides and mounting any further military intervention.