Maybe a truly sorry chapter in the history of the Middle East is coming to an end with the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. It has been dreadful for everyone and, for the unfortunate civilian population, a catastrophe confined only by its own extraordinary resolve and by the performance of UNIFIL; and as we know, the greatest human burden of that military mandate has fallen on the Irish Army.
The day when the Army is withdrawn from that mandate can't come too soon. Service in any single region for so long can only distort the culture of any small army, which to be professional must be flexible, versatile and trained to cope with the unpredictable. The Southern Lebanon mandate has become all too predictable, the protagonists and their unchanging problems known far too well to each other. Coronation Street with cluster bombs.
Not beneficial
Although the Southern Lebanon experience was good for the Army for a while, it has gone on far too long; it has become an endless garrison duty, often enlivened by gunfire, sun-tans and armed social work, and sometimes dwarfed by tragedy. But these things, repeated down through the generations, are certainly not beneficial for the Army overall. The same OPs, the same groundhog drill for incoming fire in the same locations, the same belligerent individuals, the same grateful civilian population, the same endless media applause. In the absence of real change, real constructive criticism, where lies the real challenge?
Worse than that: the Lebanon experience enabled politicians to duck their duty to maintain an army which could serve without extensive logistical assistance from other countries. UN duty masked the grave, often grotesque deficiencies which existed within the Defence Forces, the age profile being one of the most dysfunctional. So many Army captains are now in their late 30s - capable men, intelligent and dedicated, who in other armies - I absolutely know - would have made major (commandant) or lieutenant-colonel. UN officers in Bosnia were deeply impressed by the qualities of Irish officers - their intelligence, their competence and not least their ability to calm and converse with armed and very angry strangers. They were, moreover, perfectly astounded at how ludicrously under-promoted these splendid soldiers were.
I read recently of a 26-year old British army major escaping the attentions of the delightful gentlemen of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. No matter how capable an officer in our Army is, he'd never make commandant at 26 - indeed, he'd be lucky indeed to make it at 36, the age at which a good soldier in other armies becomes lieutenant-colonel and gets his battalion. In the stifling culture of pyramid-promotion according to experience and age, talent is not encouraged and faststreamed; a soldier might only start doing a job he's suited for 15 years later than he should and could have done.
Running costs
Why? Because the Department of Defence will not countenance the costs involved in running a real army - and these include buying out officers who are not going to be successful, in order to prevent an over-population of immobile, unpromotable officers clogging up the ladder to the top. So run the rules of that crazy place called DoDland.
Being part of DoDland is the curse of the Army: uniquely among Government-run organisations, it is answerable to civil servants who seem to resent its intrusion upon their vital bureaucratic time. For most government departments, the opposite is true. Give them power! Give them money! Spread their influence! But in the perverse gravitational field of DoDland, the request is: can we lower expenditure, please?
We have no troop-carrying helicopters and no plans for them. Their absence is all the more scandalous considering how useful they would have been in fighting Border terrorism. Sooner or later, given the impetus of history, our troops are going to be deployed in theatres where they will be both under fire and helicopter-dependent. And uniquely among European armies (apart from that fine spear-bearing body of men, the Swiss Guards), they have about as much experience and skill in rapid helicopter-troop manoeuvres as the two Marys, Harney and O'Rourke.
Political preening
Later this year, finally, the first of the new personnel carriers will be replacing the armoured hansom cabs the Army has been using since the Crimea. The political preening that has gone on in DoDland since these beasts were ordered suggests that mobile protection from gunfire is a luxury Irish soldiers should be grateful for. DoDland probably yearns for the Defence Forces to consist of a few hundred lumpy FCA lads dressed in ill-fitting serge and carrying Mark IV Lee Enfields without ammunition, with maybe a unit or two of yellow-jacketed Civil Defence Volunteers, to run around in circles and to blow whistles in the Phoenix Park in the event of nuclear attack on Shannon airport.
When will the Government finally decide that Ireland must militarily punch its weight, a truth our growing commitments to Europe should long ago have made inescapable? When will we cease to whimper, "We are lickul, we're too poor to be growed up" - and expect other peoples, who are militarily paying both their own way and ours, to find this display of witless infantilism enchanting?
The Lebanon phase is coming to an end. Is DoDland ready for the major decisions which will decide the future of the Defence Forces? Or will the Army, once again, be allowed to return to the impoverished, missionless languor which was its lot before the North erupted?