The real 'Fighting Irish' story

In a very interesting letter to this newspaper last Thursday, the New York-based publisher Niall O'Dowd took issue with my criticism of Martin Cullen for having welcomed members of the 69th Infantry regiment of the US army back from Iraq.

His letter is worth considering because it reveals very neatly an often unacknowledged seam of militaristic sentimentality in Irish-America. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Niall O'Dowd strongly attacked Irish critics of the war as being anti-American and assured us that there was a "reasonable chance" that "Iraqis may well welcome the advancing American army as saviours". Instead of reflecting on his own misjudgments, he still seems to think that the stars and stripes is the same flag as the Irish tricolour.

He writes that: "The Fighting 69th is emblematic of the history of the Irish in America. Indeed, if O'Toole walks into the Dáil, he will see the battle flag of the regiment, which was presented by John F Kennedy to the Irish nation on his visit in 1963. The history of the regiment during the American civil war, when thousands of Irish-born soldiers died in service to the union army in the battle against slavery, will always ensure that the regiment, which annually leads off the St Patrick's Day parade in New York, has a unique place in Irish-American culture. Martin Cullen was entirely correct in attending a ceremony honouring this regiment."

The first striking aspect of this appeal to Irish pride in the achievements of a unit of the US army is the logic that any regiment which fought against nasty people in the past gets a free pass in the present day. This is an interesting line of thought for the friend and publisher of Gerry Adams. The British army's Parachute Regiment fought with great distinction and heroism against Hitler's armies. Logically, Niall O'Dowd would be very happy for an Irish minister, on a visit to London, to welcome its members home from Iraq.

Since the logic of his position is that the shooting of civilians in Iraq is of little consequence when placed in the context of the second World War, he presumably has no hard feelings about Bloody Sunday either. His history is no more subtle than his logic. It is unquestionably true that the Fighting 69th left its blood all over the battlefields of the American civil war. It fought with such reckless courage, indeed, that it was all but wiped out. In May 1863, its commander, Thomas Francis Meagher, wrote to the War Department to tender his resignation because the Irish Brigade "no longer exists". But it is simplistic to say that these troops were motivated purely by a hatred of slavery. Some were certainly in favour of emancipation, but most fought to establish their own rights to be regarded as patriotic Americans. Many of the New York Irish were disgusted by the emancipation of the slaves - a disgust made clear by murderous attacks on the black community in protest at conscription. The blood sacrifice of the Fighting 69th and the Irish Brigade in the civil war did, however, create a racial stereotype of the Fighting Irish which was useful for both militant Irish republicanism and American imperial adventures. Niall O'Dowd does not choose to recall the involvement of the Fighting 69th in the Spanish-American War of 1898, a naked land-grab in which the US first declared its imperial ambitions beyond the continental landmass by seizing Cuba, Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Nor, curiously enough, does he recall its glorious participation in the US invasion of Mexico in 1916 and 1917, when the Fighting Irish went south of the border to punish Pancho Villa. Both of these wars would have been worth his attention in the context of the invasion of Iraq. The war on Spain was launched on a concocted pretext; the invasion of Mexico was intended to capture a notorious "terrorist", Pancho Villa, who escaped.

The latter episode is especially instructive. At a time when blood sacrifice was in the air, both the American authorities and the Clan na Gael leader, Daniel Cohalan, appealed to the stereotype of the Fighting Irish. As Matthew Pratt Guterl writes in his book The Colour of Race in America, 1900-1940: "The War Department, looking for volunteers to chase down Pancho Villa, placed advertisements in Irish-American weeklies depicting an Uncle Sam desperately in need of 'the fighting race'. Sacrifice and martyrdom emerged in Irish-American rhetoric as potent, racially regenerative experiences. 'No men of any race,' suggested Cohalan, 'have shed their blood more freely or even recklessly than have the men of our own breed'."

The whole Fighting Irish myth is a product of national stereotypes, feeding on an image of the Irish as reckless, irrational, bull-headed and bloodthirsty - perfect cannon fodder, but in need of guidance and direction by more refined minds. It is also, as Niall O'Dowd must know from his honourable involvement in the peace process, a stereotype that fed a murderous cult in which dying for one's country is the highest of all callings. If it has a vestigial legacy in Iraq, it is an inheritance of shame, not to be honoured but to be left behind.