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Are the Irish now anti-American?

By Brian O'Donovan

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire

Many of us have heard the stories. Some of us have first hand experience with it. "What is going on with 'you guys? Why is this happening? This war is wrong and your President is out of control!" These sentiments variously expressed politely, sometimes more bluntly and on occasion with outright aggression, are becoming more and more a part of American's accounts of trips to Ireland. Whether retuning "home" for a visit or vacationing for the first time, the war and our government's prosecution of it, have become front and centre topics of conversation.

This makes many of us feel uncomfortable. Ireland, after all, is the land that claims the ancestors of millions of American citizens. It is where we "return to;" where we are supposed to feel relaxed and whole. Pictures of JFK, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan abound. Stars and Stripes are plentiful. "Come home again to Ireland" is the popular beckoning of an alluring colleen welcoming us from an Aer Lingus or Tourism Ireland poster. Cleverly, it seemed at the time, Ireland hitched itself to the American bandwagon during the tech boom of the 1990s. The Celtic Tiger has always had a look of Uncle Sam about its jowls and today, post-boom, it mirrors his furrowed brows.

And yet, we now feel put-upon the instant we step off the plane at Shannon. We seem to wear a button that says in large print "Talk to me about the war. Tell me what you think of George Bush."

Shannon is a flash point. A few months ago, significant damage was inflicted by a protester on a US Army plane re-fuelling there. Angry crowds gather every weekend and security is high. The Irish Government, in an obviously self-interested move, granted US permission to continue using the airport and assured protection. In spite of this commitment, the last time I checked, Ireland was not listed amongst the "coalition of the willing."

I am deeply suspicious of this administration and opposed to this latest war. I was against the first Gulf War in 1990. I was more incensed however, when we left that region early, allowing Sadaam to gas the Kurds, decimate the Shiites in southern Iraq before our army's very eyes, and continue menacing the entire region. Our latest failure of diplomacy is chilling for the future of the world and the future of our children. When I read a recent article by Richard Perle, chairman of the defense policy board, and a high-level advisor to the Pentagon, titled "Thank God for the death of the UN," my heart sunk to a new and despondent low.

I find it extraordinary therefore when I travel to Ireland that I am so irritated when put upon by those who would cry what I sometimes perceive, as the catch cries of an anti-American media. "What do YOU guys know about it?" I hiss, springing to the defense of my adopted country. The familiar faces around me become the 'YOU' and I am part of the 'WE,' my sense of offense deepening as I sheepishly defend Rumsfeld, Cheney and Ashcroft, three of the forces I fear most in the world today and who I excoriate regularly around my own dinner table.

As Irish born and Irish-Americans, this is where we find ourselves. As Americans at War, we stand together but not united. We can criticize our own families and recognize individual shortcomings, but we will naturally take offense to affronts - real or perceived - from outside. I believe strongly this is an unjust war and yet, we are at war. Yes, it is time to stand behind our troops if doing so will keep them safer and bring them home sooner. The Irish also sense that pain, I believe. But the facile approach of targeting all Americans for verbal attack is ill-advised and unfair. It also leads to absurd outbursts and reckless, black and white arguments such as those I use defensively and against my better judgment.

We must think beyond such silliness and temper our reactions accordingly. We must also celebrate the freedom to express our feelings openly and passionately but thoughtfully, and with respect. This freedom is precisely what Irish Nationalists and American Founding Fathers fought for. In the brave new, post-war World, this freedom may be at risk. Protection of this freedom at all costs - on both sides of the Atlantic - is the commonality we should focus on in open and honest debate - each side respecting the hurt and uncertainty experienced by the other. Whatever our views on the administrations in Washington, London, Paris and Baghdad, we all acknowledge this as a very serious and unsettling time in history.

by Brian O'Donovan

Regardless of different views on the war in Iraq, Men, Women and Children with names and faces, and hopes and dreams are dying. Young people with families and sweethearts in Boise, and Brighton, and Basra extinguished.

Wilfred Owen is one of the great World War I poets. He was born in England and moved to France in 1913. He fought in the front lines in 1917. After a period of recuperation in England from a war wound, Owen returned to France to fight. It is said that the bells were ringing to celebrate the Armistice on November 11, 1918 in Shrewsbury, England when a telegram came to his parent's home, telling them their son was dead, killed by German machine guns just seven days earlier.

In reading, these lines, it becomes painfully clear how little has changed through the ages in our long history of war. The young fight and die, are mourned and forever missed. This was true at Agincourt, and the Boyne, at Gettysburg and Omaha Beach. Even as we watch video-game like footage on prime time TV, it remains true in Baghdad today.

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -

The shrill demented choirs of waiting shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen

(1893 - 1918)

In World War II, Ireland Took a Neutral Stance &emdash; at Least Officially

By Peter F. Stevens

As grumbling and outright anger rise from America's shores about the Republic of Ireland's neutral stance regarding the war with Iraq, a look back at Ireland's neutrality during World War II is timely. Many historians have noted, in recent years, that the island's official policy of "staying out of it" belies the full truth of the matter. In fact, the Republic did not exactly remain on the sidelines during the conflict.

In front of the League of Nations in 1936, as Europe lurched ever closer to war, Eamon de Valera stated: "Peace is dependent upon the will of great states.... All the small states can do... is resolutely to determine that they will not become tools of any great power and that they will resist... every attempt to force them into a war against their will." Those words charted Ireland's course throughout World War II and have largely done so right up to the present moment.

The Irish government's determination to remain neutral as conflagration burst once again across Europe and the United Kingdom was rooted both in logic and geography. Ireland was in no shape to counter an invasion either by Germany or Britain, and the island's leaders were worried that one misstep might bring Hitler's Wehrmacht knocking with as little regard as the Germans had shown for Dutch and Belgian neutrality during the Blitzkrieg of 1940.

Even worse, Ireland sat at Britain's proverbial doorstep, a fact that attracted Hitler and his generals. An Irish historian writes: "Hitler had shown an early interest in Ireland as being a tactically valuable position against Britain and tried to make Ireland join an alliance against Britain. He not only offered military help to improve the Irish army against a possible British invasion, but also suggested to help to solve the problem of Irish partition in return, as soon as the United Kingdom would be defeated."

De Valera faced an imposing challenge: How to keep both Germany and Great Britain off of Irish turf without alienating either one and risking an invasion? The Republic's six-year political highwire act had begun. Throughout the war, Germany pressured Ireland to form an alliance against Britain, de Valera warding off the overtures but always wary of incurring Hitler's rage. Similarly, de Valera always had to agonize that Winston Churchill would move against Ireland to get his hands on its ports for the Royal Navy.

One scholar assesses the dangerous relationship with Germany as one of sheer survival in de Valera's eyes: "A German-Irish alliance during the Second World War was never really possible at any stage of the conflict. Ireland was much too concerned with the continuation of its neutrality, especially towards Britain, for a number of reasons. These reasons were economical, political and, last but not least, geographical. And although de Valera had expressed his consent with Hitler's policy towards Czechoslovakia in 1938, there were still ideological gaps between the two leaders. One of the biggest ideological obstacles towards successful Irish-German relation was the National Socialist's attitude towards the Catholic church in Germany, which was persecuted and silenced; this the Irish found unacceptable.... And after the German victories came to an end in the winter of 1942, Ireland used Germany only to further threaten Britain. The only political grouping that would have welcomed close German-Irish relations was the IRA.... even if there ever had been an Irish agreement to an alliance with Germany, Hitler would eventually not have sacrificed a possible reconciliation with Britain for the sake of Ireland. Hitler would have sold the Irish down the river....Thus, in the end it proved that the Irish made the right choice in rejecting an alliance with Germany and to stay as neutral as they could."

A number of recent books and studies have revealed just how murky or even unpalatable the term "neutrality" was for many of the Irish who recognized Hitler for the monster he was.

Author Richard Doherty's Irish Men and Women in the Second World War, an account of the Irish men and women who contributed to the Allied war effort - many of them in the uniforms of the British Armed Forces-is truly topical as the question of Irish neutrality then and now is debated. Doherty's introduction describes the challenge of telling "a country's part in a war in which that country had no official part."

How "neutral" was de Valera's nation by interring downed Luftwaffe airmen for the rest of the war while secretly returning British airmen across the border to Northern Ireland? In Doherty's view, Ireland practiced a biased brand of neutrality - for the right side - in World War II.

As the war turned against the once-invincible Wehrmacht, any chance of a German move against Ireland ebbed. Still, near the end of the war, perhaps the most controversial and universally-condemned act of Irish-German relations in World War II unfolded. When the news of Hitler's suicide was announced in Dublin on May 2, 1945, de Valera paid an official visit to the German ambassador to express condolences over the Fuehrer's death.

De Valera, responding to the furor that followed his visit, snapped that "Irish neutrality demanded a neutral behavior."

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