Posted on 12/30/2001 7:57:57 AM PST by Happygal
Irish liberals who like to indulge in alittle light anti-Americanism need to get a life, writes Eoghan Harris
LISTEN up, Irish liberals. The national question has taken a new form as the international question. The people who supported Sinn Féin now support the enemies of America. Soon you will find that sitting on the fence and indulging in a little light anti-Americanism is not an adequate moral answer to what should be done about the bin Ladens of the world. Soon you will have to choose between (to borrow a title from Karl Popper) the Open Society and its Enemies.
For all his faults, at least Niall O'Dowd can face facts. Last week he finally chose between Gerry Adams and George Bush. Admittedly he did so with an absence of transparency.
As Niall O'Dowd is a long time admirer of Gerry Adams, his failure to name Sinn Féin as major source of anti-Americanism laid him open to charges of opportunistic hypocrisy. But what mattered to me was that he was forced down from the fence in the first place.
Sadly, some revisionists are so busy booing O'Dowd for trying to have it both ways, that they fail to perceive the positive side of his opportunism. The Irish Times letters page, that indispensable guide to bien-pensant bourgeois Ireland, is full of bits of bleating bad politics from liberals. Among the most astounding are the letters expressing outrage at America changing strategic alliances as circumstances change.
Irish liberals should get a life. Clearly they have never had one. If they had ever experienced playground, political party or office politics, they would know that we change our allies as circumstances changes. Now I realise that being a liberal means that logic, not life, rules. But even if it's too late for some Irish liberals to get a life, they can get a good substitute by reading Edmund Burke.
Burke regards each and every experience as specific and separate and not bound by iron laws or politically correct precepts. The past is a moral resource, not aprecedent.
Just because Sinn Féin never gave up guns in the past doesn't mean they can't be made do it this time. Just because America was wrong about Vietnam doesn't mean America was wrong about Afghanistan. Just because bombing didn't work before doesn't mean it won't work now.
By Burkean standards, O'Dowd must be given his due for learning a lesson, even if it was a limited one and even if he dodged adding Sinn Féin to the list of anti-American forces. At least he knew he had to take sides. Not so, the deluded Irish liberals who think they can sit out this war, selecting pieces of high moral ground from which they can watch the wars as safe spectators.
In contrast to this creepy crowd of liberal voyeurs, O'Dowd at least knows what's going down. We can only conclude from his actions that Americans, including Irish-Americans, are very angry about anti-Americanism in Ireland. And by publicly and correctly charging the Irish media with anti-Americanism, O'Dowd has put himself on a collision course with his friends in Sinn Féin whose anti-Americanism is one of their main attractions for the Irish media.
And it's not only the broadcasters. Among the broadsheets, only the Sunday Independent has been steadfast in support of America. Last week's front page is a case in point. Last week the eye of a somnolent Sinn Féin spindoctor might have drifted down to a holly-clad picture of Hugh Leonard dressed as Santa Claus, panned across to The Adoration of the Shepherds by Georges De La Tour and jumped out of its socket at Jerome Reilly's story 'US Fury at SF in Cuba'.
Backing up the news story which ran and ran on RTE three trusted commentators, John A Murphy, Ronan Fanning and George Dempsey, showed us how the trip had aroused American anger at many levels. But while I was completely convinced by their analysis, I could not agree with the implication that Adams had made an inadvertent mistake.
Adams seldom makes a big media mistake. And he and his advisors would have known that cuddling Castro would anger Americans. So why did he go to
Cuba? Why curry favour with a feeble Fidel Castro who has no clout, and anger a fighting fit George Bush who has a clout like a Christian Brother?
After a week mulling over that mystery, I think I have ground that general question (why did he do it?) down to three smaller but more specific questions. Does Sinn Féin no longer care about winning friends in Washington? Does it no longer need American dollars? And if not, why not?
Applying simple logic produces some answers. First, Sinn Féin no longer needs friends in Washington. Bill Clinton and Jean Kennedy Smith have been (to borrow Lenin's phrase about liberals) "useful idiots". Also, as America does not trust Democrats to wage war, the Bush Republicans who see through Sinn Féin will be around for a long time. So what about the dollars? Sinn Fén makes a minimum million dollars annually from Irish Americans. A lot of that will dry up, judging by the jaundiced letters I'm getting from former American supporters. But American dollars are a small dollop set against racketeering and robberies in Ireland which net the IRA an annual income close to $10m per annum.
So what's Sinn Féin's strategy? Simple. They're bringing it all back home. Irish ambivalence will allow them to go on financing the struggle for state power in Ireland. Irish anti-Americanism is providing them with a solid platform in the Republic. And the Irish media are in their metaphorical pocket. So it's not surprising that Sinn Féin sees Irish liberals who oppose the Afghan war as so many useful idiots. So do I.
Libya arms them, trains them, and moves them around. Ditto did the thankfully former Geran Democratic Republic. Thee IRA has also made Ireland a transhipment point for heroin from all points East, and given the country a drug problem, complete with horrible AIDS.
I'm not sure I understand that statement. Logical liberals (see Nat Hentoff) are so few in number that they are virtually extinct.
But let's not pretend this is something new. Since DeValera, the Irish have been willing to cut off their nose to spite their face. What was it he said, "Burn everything English except it's coal!".
World War II was an "emergency" for Ireland, a country that did not take a sides with the Allies or the Axis in that war. In fact, some Irish were known to be rooting for Germany as it bombed London.
The socialists have so twisted the vocabulary in Ireland that even pub owners don't view themselves as capitalists!
Aside from the above, a Happy New Year to you HappyGal. I'm glad you have found FreeRepublic a place to spend time. Let me know if you're ever in the states.
But at heart, these Irish terrorists are only an extension of the basic Irish character, a people who would go out of their way to invent adversity if there was not enough of it already in their lives.
In the 1840's, over in the Northeast US, there was a political party known as the "Know-Nothing" party. It was a strong anti-Irish and anti-Immigration party.
It disbanded, and parts of that party became the Republican Party. The Irish in the US voted solid democrat until starting with Nixon in 68(because of LBJ), and many finally broke with the dems fully in 1980 with Reagan(Irish name, and he was also pro-life)
There still is, especially in the northeast a long running relationship between Irish and democrats, despite the fact that most Irish in the US are very if nothing else, socially conservative.
Aye, we love a good fight.
But the Irish always find a way to survive and make it.
Hmmmmm...that must explain my FR addiction!
If one reads the writings of Southern politicians and leaders before the Civil War, you will notice that many, if not the vast majority, of Southern leaders wer strongly pro-Irish Catholic and strongly against the Know-Nothings. I could go and dig up some interesting quotes from several pre-War governors of Southern states that express views that would shock most in their seeming "tolerance", tolerance of other ethnicities and religions not being sometihng we have been led to associate with the Confederacy. While anti-Irish sentiment was very strong in the North, it was all but negligible in the South, at least in political action. Of ocurse, there was some debasing of Irishmen in the South, but overall it was a fine picture for sons of Erin in the South. The Irish Catholic Church in the South was also strongly on the side of the Confederacy, including one priest who the Confederacy dispatched to the Pope to appeal for an end to Union recruitment in Ireland. Evidently it worked to a great degree, though it was very late in the war and thus had little effect.
Incidentally, Mr. Patrick Cleburne, an Irishman who settled in Arkansas, and later became a Confederate general, had originaly been a Whig, but converted to the Democrat party (the prevelant party of Southerners and Irishmen of the day) after a Know-Nothing shot him in the back while Cleburne was walking down the street. Let's be glad political affiliation rarely leads to such things today!
Get a grip newbie.
You think the recent catching of the IRA among the Marxist rebels of Columbia is the first time the IRA has mingled with the commie/terrorist underworld? Perhaps they were just there for Spanish lessons.
It's long common knowledge that the IRA has had relationships with Qhaddiffi in Libya and other Islamic terrorists around the world. Adams was just in Cuba praising Castro. It's you that needs to look up the facts.
That said, it's quite possible to be pro-Irish and anti-IRA. A majority of people in the Republic are against the IRA's use of violence and suspicious of Sinn Fein. The problem is that the minority in the Republic is not small enough.
Mind you, the UDF/UDP, and the Brits in general, don't get a free ride with respect to the troubles from me. The "Protestant" terrorists are no better than the IRA/RIRA/whatever.
And Alloysteel is right. The Irish aren't happy unless they're fighting with eachother.
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