THE world is unquestionably a safer place now that the Dail has passed the Chemical Weapons Bill, thereby enabling us to sign the Geneva Convention prohibition on the development, production and stockpiling of chemical weapons. Perhaps Dail Eireann might next ban intergalactic laser beams, solemnly swear that we will detonate no thermonuclear devices on the surface of Uranus and undertake never to build germ weapon factories on the polar ice caps. And, no doubt, from the nations of the planet Earth, a big sigh of relief all round. We are on the side of the angels.
The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and the Iraqis - to mention but a few - are almost certainly not on the side of the angels. They will either sign this Bill and ignore its terms or they will not sign it at all, because they have no intention of depriving themselves of the weapons systems which might prove so useful at wiping out an enemy's infantry or cowing its civilian population. It is easy to forget in our particular sanctuary that it can be a truly horrible world out there.
But of course we can afford to be virtuous in matters of war because we have three of the world's great democracies - the USA, France and Britain - interested in militarily preserving our status quo. We lived under their nuclear protection during the Cold War, while deploring the very arsenal which kept the West free. No doubt the great powers enjoyed receiving lectures from the people of Ireland on the vileness of modern weaponry, which is indeed vile. All weaponry is unvile weaponry is not weaponry.
A Faustian Pact
For nobody ever defended a frontier with scrambled eggs or hearth rugs or excerpts from the Book of Leviticus or anything which was not intrinsically evil. The very act of defence, within a state or at its frontiers, requires a compromise with the devil; and of course, in such Faustian pacts, the devil always wins.
There is no moral way of taking life; patriotic murder is simply an expedient - though possibly unavoidable - immorality.
Only rare and lucky countries, such as Ireland or Costa Rica, which enjoy an extraordinary geographical protection and undisputed boundaries, can effectively dispose of a defence requirement (Costa Rica has no army at all, and our army is barely more than a gendarmerie). This isolation from the physical realities of war or the threat of war enables us to talk with very straight faces about how we will police our ban on chemical weapons.
Eithne Fitzgerald told the Dail, with not a titter about the place, how our conformity with the Geneva Convention was to be policed. "The principal obligation on companies will be to keep records of their use of chemicals covered by the convention and to allow inspectors to enter their premises to check the compliance."
A Meaningless Convention
Oh this is great stuff indeed. Inspectors checking compliance, eh? And not a smirk to be seen. Did our TDs temporarily forget how brilliantly successful our State inspectorate has been in "supervising" the biggest and most enduring illegal arms operation in Europe? Did not one TD remember that we have an illicit explosives industry which last year destroyed Canary Wharf and the centre of Manchester? Or were they too busy nodding their heads at how virtuous we are, signing on for the provisions of the Geneva Convention and all, and sounding terribly important? The horrible truth is that the Geneva Convention is meaningless.
You can make a poison gas from the contents of a supermarket shelf, just as you can make city shattering high explosives from icing sugar and diesel. The chlorine gas which the Germans unleashed on the Ypres salient 82 years ago this week (and which killed hundreds of Irish troops) can be conjured from ordinary domestic cleansers by students doing their Leaving Certificate.
IRA engineers could, if they wanted, very probably manufacture the lethal sarin gas which Japanese terrorists made in their bootleg broom cupboard laboratory a couple of years ago.
We are, of course, not the only people signing up to this Chemical Weapons Convention. Out of comparable motives of conspicuous piety, the Americans are as well - and against the advice of four former Secretaries of State, who say that the convention is simply unverifiable; though Eithne Fitzgerald's inspectors, with their clipboards and their pockets full of pens, might not agree. And presumably this ban on poison gases will not apply to the many execution chambers in the US where the almond whiff of cyanogen is the last smell a prisoner ever gets.
At this extraordinary juncture in world history, with the possibility of war being absent into the foreseeable future, one can almost elevate any declared virtue into public policy, though the approach of war soon abolishes such virtuousness, as recent events in Lima has shown.
No Prisoners Taken
We know now that the commando raid there took place during a weeldy football match between 10 of the 14 terrorists, most of them teenagers; yet none of those naive country boys was taken alive.
Were they playing football while armed and were shot down in a two way firefight? Or were they simply bumped off, unarmed and defenceless, by the special forces pour encourager les autres? The unquestioned convention has arisen since the Iranian embassy siege in London that terrorist hostage takers are summarily executed - i.e., murdered - at the end of a siege by special groups of men who are immune to the normal laws of society, and who are elevated to being national heroes for their deeds.
Maybe such killings make practical but dreadful sense, though the national hero worship of the killers is truly revolting. But should it really be a matter for international law that it is okay if unarmed and compliant terrorists are shot by primitive metal bullets smashing open their young football shirted ribcages and their boyish skulls, but not okay if they are silently and painlessly put to death with a nervegas?