Let’s keep well away from the Baghdad trap
To the extent that it was ever a serious war aim, the peace may well have been lost in the first chaotic week or so.
The priorities of the occupiers were never clearer and they were not to achieve a painless transfer of power.
One did not need a doctorate in military science to list the military options open to Saddam once the balloon went up. Nor has anybody who was around in this island during the last three decades of the 20th century any excuse for not understanding what was likely to happen next. We, better than most, understand that a very small, determined number of people, with a fraction of the portable weapons now floating around Iraq, can provoke actions by the most benign of occupying forces which eventually alienate the civilian population.
Any Irish government considering the option of committing Irish troops or civilians to Iraq must realise that the
ordinary Iraqi doesn't have the time, inclination or anthropological and historical expertise to distinguish among soldiers from Birmingham (Alabama), Birmingham (England), or Balbriggan. If we go in, we do not go in as the 'nice Irish.' We go in as reinforcements for the occupiers and for their agenda.
Someday it will end in a re-run of the evacuation of Saigon but not 'til the oil is gone. That oil is costing American and British lives (even an Irish volunteer life) and it will cost many more. Maybe in a harsh world that is the way it has got to be. As former New York Mayor Ed Koch put it, maybe this is simply about preventing little old ladies dying of hyopthermia in New Jersey. However, if an Irish government is going to put Irish lives at risk, let it be honest about the reason why and let the cost/benefit analysis be a clinical one.
Maurice O'Connell,
19, Forge Park,
Tralee,
Co Kerry.
