In your guts you know he’s nuts – just fill in a name, time and place

By Ryle Dwyer

The first world war, which was sparked by an act of terrorism, began in almost a festive atmosphere with people confidently predicting that it would be over by Christmas. By the time it ended over four years later, millions were dead, and the conflict was to have disastrous repercussions that were to last throughout the remainder of the century.

It made way not only for the Russian revolution and the rise of communism, but also the second world war. That war, in turn, resulted in the imprisonment of eastern Europe for almost half a century.

The first world war also had a profound impact on this country, with repercussions to the present day. The Easter rebellion of 1916 was conceived to exploit ‘England’s difficulty’ during that conflict.

“Heroism has come back to earth,” Patrick Pearse’s newspaper declared in December, 1915. “The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives gladly given for love of country.”

That must be was one of the vilest pieces of blasphemous twaddle ever written. James Connolly actually stated that whoever wrote it was a “blithering idiot”. The author was Patrick Pearse. Yet, notwithstanding his demented view of the world, many people here would canonise him.

The celebration of the golden jubilee of Easter Rebellion in 1966 played no small part in rousing those passions in Northern Ireland that eventually exploded into the violence that marred much of the remainder of the century.

This week in the North we have been witnessing the difficulties of coming to a rational agreement while the memories of conflict leave people vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous individuals.

In the past century no American president ever publicly courted war like George W Bush has been doing during the past six months. President Woodrow Wilson campaigned for re-election in 1916 on a promise to keep America out of the first world war, but he was not back in office a month when he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. Franklin Roosevelt also campaigned for re-election in 1940 by promising to keep the USA out of the second world war. He would undoubtedly have liked to get America into the conflict earlier, but people were so disillusioned by their experiences following the first world war that the President could not risk asking Congress to declare war until after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

The big lesson that Wilson and Roosevelt learned from those wars was the need for an international body to regulate peace in order to minimise the risk of war.

The League of Nations was Wilson’s brainchild, but Americans were so disillusioned with his brand of interventionism that the USA refused to join the league. After the second world war the United Nations Organisation was established.

Even though the Americans essentially ignored the UN during the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson pretended that he did not wish to get involved in that war. During the election campaign of 1964 he promised that American boys would not do the fighting of Asian boys in Vietnam. All the while he was scheming to get into the war.

Probably the nearest we came to the current brand of warmongering was in 1964 when Barry Goldwater, Johnson’s Republican opponent, was talking about bombing North Vietnam into “a mud puddle”.

‘In your heart, you know he’s right’ was the Goldwater campaign slogan. The Democrats responded with their own counter slogan: “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.” Goldwater, who was buried in a Johnson landslide, carried only a handful of southern states that had still not got over the American Civil War.

Lyndon Johnson then tried to do much of what Goldwater had advocated. It was to have tragic consequences for himself and the nation. Richard Nixon was elected to replace him in 1968 on a promise that he had a plan to end the war. He was lying and he enlisted the help of another proficient liar as his chief foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger. They dragged out the war for another four years. With the release of the documentary material from that period, we have plenty of hard evidence of their lying.

Last November, when President Bush appointed Kissinger to head the commission inquiring into the 9-11 disaster, it provoked squeals of outrage and incredulity. “A liar appointed by a moron,” thundered Robert Merkin.

“Mainstream American history will remember Henry Kissinger as our most famous liar. Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation?” asked Christopher Hitchins. The uproar was so great that Kissinger was promptly dropped. Was Bush just out of touch with political reality in making the appointment, or was it an example of contemptible arrogance? The US and Britain may be able to defeat Saddam relatively easily, but instituting democracy will be extremely difficult, because Iraq is comprised of three intensely antagonistic groups of people. We have seen the difficulties of trying to operate democracy with just two antagonistic groups in Northern Ireland. If Bush persists in going to war without the backing of the UN, as well as substantial support from Muslim countries, the Americans will run the risk of not only alienating but also destabilising the whole Muslim world.

This will play into the hands of Bin Laden and his ilk. The sympathetic governments of Muslim countries like Pakistan or Turkey might well be toppled. Even Tony Blair could be lucky to hold on to his leadership.

In 1956 the British and French formed an unholy alliance with Israel and invaded the Suez, with disastrous consequences. The once glittering political career of the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, came to a prompt and sticky end. Are Bush and Blair about to display similar stupidity and arrogance?

Of course, we can’t be smug, because we witnessed this week the most contemptible exhibition of arrogance by any Irish government with the introduction of a bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act. As a result of information released under that Act, Charlie McCreevy was exposed last year as having lied shamelessly during the general election campaign when he declared there were no plans, “secret or otherwise”, to cut back on government spending, even though his Department of Finance had already notified other departments to make cuts.

Usually when a minister is exposed as having lied deliberately, he is forced to resign because the efficiency of any democracy is dependent on an informed electorate. But there seems to be no bounds to the arrogance of this Government. It now has the naked insolence to try to emasculate the legislation that was used to expose its shameful perversion of our democracy.

Not content with having already dumped on the electorate and members of the Oireachtas, the Government have put Charlie McCreevy in charge of the amending legislation. They are now rubbing everyone’s nose in it.