Irish Echo, October 16, 2002
As another president named Bush mounts his war horse for a gallop around the Iraqi paddock, I'm reminded of something a senior Sinn Fein figure in South Armagh said to me seven years ago.
Haass: where are the blushes?
His point -- that the acceptability of violence depends entirely upon who is lobbing the bomb -- has great currency these days. After all, you might be forgiven for assuming that an administration gleefully pursuing war in Iraq -- having not yet finished one in Afghanistan, mind you -- might be too abashed to scold others on the wrongs of political violence. Yet not a blush has been seen on Richard Haass, America's envoy to Northern Ireland, who is agitated at the IRA's antics, particularly with FARC guerillas in Colombia.
The Bush administration declares Irish republicans can't be respectable democrats while training Central American rebels in the finer points of killing people. Fair point. I'm sure that when Mr. Haass raised this matter with Gerry Adams, Adams mentioned the Reagan-funded death squads in Nicaragua and El Salvador, don't you think? Mr. Haass also criticized republicans for continuing to "make preparations for violence." This is something of a cheek since his own duties involve persuading despotic Arab regimes to support a war against Iraq or at least remain mute when it happens. Haass's support for a cease-fire monitor to adjudicate in the North is no less audacious since the U.S. blithely ignores outside opposition to its own activities.
That there is a striking dichotomy in how the U.S. government treats paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland versus its own impending unilateral military actions is unsurprising. Yet it goes beyond forelock-tugging for Irish leaders to meekly nod assent as President Bush or his emissary wags a disapproving finger about violence while readying their own missiles for action. For the White House to demand republicans account for their actions -- in Belfast or Colombia -- is, to say the least, astonishing in its arrogance. As Eamonn McCann amusingly suggests, Sinn Fein's response ought to be an unequivocal "Farc off!"
Instead, Sinn Fein leaders accept the brazen pieties of this administration with not a hint of backchat. They do not want for company. As the president rattles his saber at Saddam, many of those who firmly opposed IRA and British state violence in Northern Ireland seem ill-disposed to do anything but polish his blade.
Take Rep. Ben Gilman, a principled opponent of Irish violence but a hearty supporter of Bush's war plans. "It is imperative that the world, in a united front, takes this threat seriously and takes preventive action‚" he said. Rep. Peter King, the Long Island Republican, is another hawk. "I think that my constituents, and it's probably true of most in the New York area, would generally support the concept of the war now," he remarked. "This is not warmongering, this is not imperialism." To be fair, King is no hypocrite, since he didn't denounce IRA violence either. The same is not true of many of his colleagues.
There may be a moral hypocrisy here, but there is a political consistency. Being pro-war on Iraq yet anti-war in Northern Ireland are both safe plays, requiring neither courage nor expenditure of political capital. To his credit, Sen. Ted Kennedy has stood firm against the war, pointing out that not a scintilla of evidence proves Iraq constitutes a clear and present danger to the U.S. No such discrepancies trouble Pete King. Once quick to attack British perfidy, King seems not at all suspicious when Tony Blair (a faithful valet to Bush in the mould of Jeeves) issues an overhyped dossier of reheated "evidence" to bolster the American position. Is it really so long ago that a document supporting violence issued from Whitehall would have had Pete manning the TV barricades?
The "respectable" attitude to war in Iraq (for it) and war in Northern Ireland (agin' it) implies two things: first, that the killing of innocents is more acceptable when commissioned by a sovereign state than by a rogue agency of the peasantry; and, second, that our conflict is a squalid and pointless little affair, presumably because there are no oil fields in Cullybackey.
Like its predecessors, the Bush administration cites the lack of public support for the IRA as one reason why its war must end. Fair enough. Yet the fact that millions are fervently opposed to Mr. Bush's war matters not a whit. That's the problem with those who stake out the moral high ground -- they invariably end up looking down on the rest of us. As long as America vows to ignore international opposition and take action against Iraq, its elected leaders have no business demanding that the Irish restrain themselves.
