One week ago, for the last day for years to come, we woke to a morning in which the world was not at war. That day is now done, and the issue before us is actually quite simple. Which side are we on? If we show doubt, then we tell the foes of civilisation to keep pushing; the door is not locked. It's not complicated. Terrorists anywhere must now be told that finally Ireland will stand four square against terrorism.
There are no extenuating circumstances for the Manhattan and Pentagon holocausts, any more than there are extenuating circumstances for what happened to Europe's Jews, and others, 60 years ago. To be sure, there is a history to all events; but to deploy that history as mitigation or justification or contextualisation for mass murder is to fall for the homicidal, self-pitying babble which all misanthropic psychopaths indulge in.
World freedom
Osama Bin Laden is an Islamic fascist who loathes the West, democracy, Christianity, Judaism. His every project is about the taking of human life. Of course he loathes the US. Why wouldn't he? The US is the primary defender of world freedom. That freedom is one we enjoy. From 1941 onwards in one war, and through the many years of the colder one which followed, we lived within the American imperium; without that protection, we would today be speaking German, and no doubt ruled by Sinn FΘin gauleiters, or be an Atlantic Albania, communist and pauperised.
How a visceral hatred of the US has become so chic, so commonplace in Irish bien-pensant circles is a true mystery to me. Perhaps it is political immaturity, but that alone would not explain the frequency with which we give platitudinous lectures to those who guard us and our common values. Nor does it explain the frequency with which we not merely tolerate lies about the US, but actually revel in them: such risible canards as that the US armed Saddam, that US policies are causing Iraqi children to die of hunger, or that US policy in the Middle East has been totally one-sided.
Saddam's army was Soviet-equipped. Iraqi children die because he is diverting money to his army, which our Government once went to such trouble to provide with beef - remember? Without vast US aid, Egypt would long ago have slid into the Nile and been washed away; similarly, Jordan. Without US diplomacy, they would still be locked in perpetual war with Israel. Until a year ago, the US was doing its best to broker a deal between the PLO and Israel; and the absolutist forces which rejected the most generous offer that any Israeli government could offer the Palestinians, and still survive the opinions of its electorate, are represented most admirably by the butchers of Manhattan.
Not a "victim"
Their leader, Osama Bin Laden, is not a "victim". Nor are his deranged followers. The people responsible for the war crimes in the US come from prosperous, well-educated Arab families; they do not come from the West Bank and Gaza. Their decision to kill thousands of people was not based on anything to do with personal experience, but simply on race hatred. Nor is their decision to kill themselves a measure of a supposedly "Muslim" devotion to a cause, but merely another example of cultic suicide, such as we have repeatedly seen from "Christians" in recent years at Waco, in Guyana, in Switzerland.
To be sure, there are inconsistencies, failures, inadequacies in many US policies; this is because the US government is composed of human beings. But I would far rather have US policy with all its weaknesses than have to endure the sanctimonious posturing of the professional US-bashers of Irish life. We are in morally the weakest position of any country in Europe to be making such noises: for we have deliberately chosen to have a defence policy of no-defence, and instead of staying gratefully silent beneath the umbrella of cost-free protection, we have repeatedly bawled pious homilies into our protectors' ears about the immorality of umbrellas.
This diseased and querulous neutralism has so contaminated our political life that our political leaders never dared confront it head on. That failure led to the rejection of the Nice Treaty - to the delight, of course, of the morally lazy and intellectually torpid greens of both varieties - the tree-huggers and the kneecappers.
Essential values
More than human beings perished in last week's attacks; so too did the fence beneath us. Now we should finally accept that Europe and the US stand for the same essential values: the rule of law, of free speech, free trade, free association, free thought.
These are values not just worth defending verbally, but by military alliance as well, with all the compromises such alliances mean.
The road ahead will be hard, but it is not a road of US choosing. No major power anywhere could accept such a slaughter as Manhattan and not reply. The US is the greatest democracy in the world, under whose protection all other democracies have flourished. It is time for us to acknowledge that.
In the coming conflict, no doubt mistakes will be made - though I would trust a regime which includes such heavyweights as Powell, Cheney and Rice to make as few as humanly possible. All the US wants to know now is that when the going gets tough, as it truly will, it will not be treated to vapid holier-than-thouisms from beyond its shores. It needs to know who its shoulder-to-shoulder friends are.
Well, here's one.