No céad míle fáilte for Americans

SO now we arrest tired and lonely American soldiers walking the streets of Ennis while their plane is being repaired at Shannon airport.

How low can this country sink? How much embarrassment and disgrace can we stand? I am so ashamed.

Young American soldiers do not make foreign policy. They go to war and risk their lives fighting against the people who crash airplanes into skyscrapers, blow up buses and nightclubs full of innocent civilians, gas their own people and declare holy war against all Christians.

And here in the ‘Ireland of a Thousand Welcomes’, we try to arrest and imprison them because their civilian clothes are locked in the hold of a disabled aircraft. A walk down to the petrol pumps to get a Coke is a major offence in the Republic of Ireland. Well, if you’re an American it is.

Thank goodness for e-mail because I would surely go broke writing to every travel agent in the US, telling them that Americans are no longer welcome in Ireland. Every travel agent, every corporate booking agent, every golf tour operator, every newspaper I can find on the internet, mass mailings if I can afford them.

America — the Irish hate you and elected members of the Irish Government want to prosecute your brave young soldiers and put them in our jails.

I intend to let the word go forth that Conor Corgan, Edward Horgan (Irish Army — retired) and Trevor Sargent (Green Party leader) will arrest you if you come to Ireland. They will put you on trial for war crimes, they will imprison you if they can. They actually hate you.

I wonder if Michael Dell knows he is no longer welcome in Ireland. I would guess that the executive team from Intel looking for their next expansion site should be told to avoid the streets of Ireland.

Maybe those who administer the US/Ireland Fund should get the press clippings I have on the treatment of America’s heroes in the Republic of Ireland.

Is the US Congress still looking to grant amnesty to the illegal Irish living there? Should they now? I am a naturalised Irish citizen.

Messrs Sargent, Horgan, Corgan, if you want my passport, just come and ask for it.

But until you do I intend to work as hard as I can to let Americans know how you want to treat them in Ireland.

If you are the voice of modern Ireland, I’d be happy to be deported tomorrow. You and your ilk disgust me.

Michael Higgins

Knockanef

Adare

Co Limerick