Speech by Ruairí Quinn, Leader of the Labour Party In the Dáil Debate on the atrocities in the United States Tuesday, September 18th, 2001
Language is the essence of politics. We use words every day to make our political points and get our message across. Words are not normally a problem for politicians, but political leaders all over the world have struggled for the past week to find words to match the enormity of what happened in the United States last Tuesday.
The words we have resorted to in the past to describe or condemn terrorists acts - shocking, horrific, murderous, unbelievable - all seem like devalued currency against the background of what happened in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania last week. Yet as democratically elected political representatives we must struggle to find the words to articulate the grief, the pain the anguish of the Irish people and to try and provide some degree of comfort and solidarity for the American people.
We must also use our collective voices as representatives of the Irish people to ensure that the difficult decisions that must now be taken by the international community and by the United States, in particular, are grounded in good judgement and in compassion. They should not lead to the loss of yet more innocent lives.
There has been some debate in recent times about the nature of our political relationship with the United States and with Europe. But nobody can question the unique nature of the economic, social, cultural and familial links that exist between Ireland and the United States of America. For generations America has been the haven for those fleeing economic want and political oppression here. Is there a family in this country that does not have a relative in the United States?
In previous generations the 'letter from America' was a significant source of income for many families. Today, economic investment by U.S. based firms is the source of employment for tens of thousands of young Irish men and women. It has contributed enormously to our economic growth of recent years. Young Irish people who once emigrated to America out of necessity, now go there out of choice, to expand their education, to further their careers or simply to sample the wonderful diversity of life that is the United States.
And while in the past emigration to the United States often meant the virtual severing of links with family members remaining at home, the miracle of modern travel and communications means that this is no longer the case. Our knowledge of life in the United States has never been greater, our links never stronger.
It is for all of these reasons that the atrocities in the United States have been so deeply felt in Ireland. There were those who thought that the decision to declare a national day of mourning was excessive, but in the circumstances I believe that it was quite appropriate. And the uniquely respectful way in which the day was observed was a vindication of that decision.
We all benefited from a day of reflection to remember the victims through religious services or simply to reflect on the awful events of last Tuesday. Foremost in our thoughts must the victims and their families.
More than five thousand people died within an hour. Many more than were killed at Pearl Harbour.
More than died through 30 years of politically motivated violence in Northern Ireland.
Five thousand families bereaved; thousands robbed of a loved one; thousands of children robbed of a parent; flight crews knifed to death; firms wiped out; the vibrant financial heart of a great city laid waste.
Whole sections of the New York Police Department and the New York Fire Service wiped out as they fought to save others.
The painful list of casualties reflects the close links I spoke about earlier. McGuinness, Sweeney, Casey, Hennessey, Keating, Cahill, Judge - names we encounter every time we pick up an Irish telephone book. And we think too, of the families here who have been bereaved. We still do not know the full extent of the Irish casualties, but it is clear that the Irish death toll will be as great as or close to the numbers who died in Omagh or in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
The suffering of the families here in Ireland and in the United States has clearly been greatly exacerbated by the slow and so far relatively unsuccessful search for bodies. The awful truth that many bodies may never be discovered will add to the trauma. I urge the government to ensure that all available support and assistance will be offered to Irish families - based here or in the United States - to help them through their ordeal.
Part of the reason that people - not just in Ireland, but throughout the world - have been so shaken by the events of Tuesday last is that we were, in effect, witnesses to this unprecedented mass murder.
We saw, live, on our televisions, the plane plough into the second tower.
We saw, live on our televisions, people plunging to their deaths and the more fortunate fleeing for their lives.
We saw, live on our televisions, these two great buildings turn to a heap of dust and rubble.
We were, in a way, all targets of these attacks. These were an attack on humanity itself. They were attacks on the international community ? citizens of 62 countries, almost a third of the membership of the United Nations - are said to be still missing. It is entirely appropriate that the international community should be a part of the response to this outrage.
It is perfectly understandable that, in the United States and elsewhere, there should be a wish to lash out in response to these terrible, terrible acts. Indeed I think it would be unreasonable not to expect the United States to respond to this unprecedented assault on its people. They clearly have the right and the responsibility to do all in their power to prevent similar attacks into the future.
But I would urge very strongly that whatever is done, should be done in accordance with international law and on the basis of the greatest degree of international consensus.
Restraint in the face of provocation and assault is a sign not of weakness, but of strength. I am conscious that there are concerns not just in the international community, but within the United States itself, at what might now happen. I was taken by the words of the Dean of Washington Cathedral who, in the course of that very moving ceremony attended by President Bush and other U.S. political leaders last Friday said 'save us from blind vengance and let us not become the evil we deplore'.
I believe that the objective should be to bring to justice those responsible and to see the destruction of the organisation and apparatus used to organise and carry out these evil deeds. Most of all we must try to ensure that innocent people should not be made to suffer and should not be made to die for something over which they had no influence and no control.
We can take hope from the fact that the tyrants who caused immense suffering in the Balkans and who considered themselves immune from sanction are now paying a high price before the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.
Who would have believed, even a few years ago, Slobodan Milosovic, would now be standing trial for his many crimes, but international cooperation has made that possible.
We should pursue those responsible for the attack in the same spirit of international cooperation.
I am encouraged by the fact that the United States, so far, seems to be anxious to proceed on the basis of international consensus. I welcome the rapid response by the Security Council of the United Nations last week and I hope that the U.N. will continue to be centrally involved. Indeed the degree of international support received by the United States so far and the worldwide extent of the condemnation of those responsible provides one of the few grounds for hope or optimism from the past week. The fight against this type of terrorism will prove to be a long hard struggle.
But let there be no mistake about it. Those responsible for these atrocities did not act in the name of Allah. Nor did they do so out of any human concern for the plight of the Palestinian people ? the horror on the face of Yasser Arafat as he condemned the attack proves that.
Neither are they are not interested in any solution to the conflict in the Middle East, still less a peaceful solution. And because they are not, we should be. They want to see that problem get worse so as to fan their flames of hate.
The express desire of those responsible for these actions is to put in place a new Cold War ? to turn the Muslim and Christian worlds at each others throat. If their act, their barbarity is to define the 21st century, it would represent for them the greatest victory possible. There is an onus on the international community to make sure that doesn't happen. And that does involve greater efforts on our part to resolve the Palestinian crisis and issues like global poverty and marginalisation. Not because of the actions of these murderers but because these initiatives should be taken anyway.
I was struck by a piece in The Observer newspaper on Sunday. It was by a Muslim writer, Ziauddin Sardar. Expressing the hurt of crimes done purportedly in the name of his faith he says;
'Are the people calling themselves Muslims capable of such atrocities? Are they reading the same Koran? Are they the followers of the same Prophet Muhammad?"
As Irish people who have seen appalling crimes committed in our name, we should have a particular empathy with these emotions.
We must ensure that our wish to see those responsible for these attacks does not deteriorate into some latter day anti-Islamic crusade. The overwhelming majority of Islamic people from all over the world have been as horrified by these attacks as Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists or humanists. Let us not forget that American Muslims died in these attacks as well.
It is clear, a Cheann Comhairle, that the United States of America, in common with all other legitimate states, has an inherent right of self defence, both national and collective.
This right is not conferred by the UN Charter, nor is it conferred by the recent UN Security Council resolution. The United Nations Charter itself recognises explicitly that the right to self-defence is inherent in States and is not affected by the Charter unless and until the Security Council decides on a particular course of action in the interests of international peace and security.
It follows clearly that the Security Council and in particular the Irish Government were not in any sense authorising military action by the Americans in passing the recent resolution, and still less was the Council or Ireland giving the Americans a blank cheque.
It is clear too that no state should seek to conceal those responsible for unlawful attacks on others. But there is a clear obligation on all countries not to harbour or support mass murderers. Those who sponsor terrorism, are terrorists themselves. Their citizens though are not. For the authorities in Afghanistan the handing over of Osama Bin Laden should not be an issue. He should already be in the custody of the United Nations.
And it also goes without saying that the right to self-defence is not an absolute one, and that the exercise of that right must itself be in conformity with the requirements of international law. The laws and customs of war and armed conflict have been undergoing continuing evolution and progression over time and have now clearly reached the stage where the use of mass destruction or the targeting of civilian populations are unlawful and indeed criminal.
There has been much talk of the vengeance and wrath of America. I do not hesitate to say that vengeance and wrath, even in response to last week's outrages, are not a basis for military action. The international community seeks peace, security and justice, not revenge.
While we do not yet know the scope of future American action, I hope and expect that, in consultation with other members of the Atlantic Alliance and other states, their response will be directed only towards those goals of peace, security and justice and will be prosecuted in strict accordance with international legal principles.
As President of the Security Council, next month the Government will be called on to play a lead role in securing the primacy of the system of international co-operation.
I rather doubt whether we will be called upon to provide any material assistance or facilities to the American or alliance efforts, but if we are I trust that the Government will bring the matter back before the House for approval under Article 28.3.1 of the Constitution.
As members of the Security Council, and as a country which advocates peaceful solutions to international problems, I am afraid that our credibility suffers more than a little from our failure fully to sign up to international legal co-operation, a failure which is not entirely the fault of the present administration. It is a charge that could be levelled at the United States also.
Now would be a good time to reassess our degree of adherence to principles of international peaceful co-operation, if only because the commitment of the international community to those principles will be tested in the weeks and months ahead.
The most glaring gap is our failure to recognise the International Court of Justice. As members of the UN we, like all other members, are parties to the Statute of the Court, but we have never made the necessary declaration recognising the court's jurisdiction. Our calls as a member or as President of the Security Council for peaceful resolution of disputes will ring a little hollow when we ourselves have failed to sign on to the principal judicial means for bringing about that peaceful resolution.
Nor have we ratified the European convention on the peaceful resolution of disputes, even though we helped to draft it. Far from being a moribund or dormant convention, it is used as a basis for jurisdiction at the World Court and indeed is the basis of jurisdiction in a case now pending before the Court.
Following on from the "Yes" vote in the referendum on the Statute of the International Criminal Court, it is now time to ratify that statute without delay, so as to underpin the system of international judicial co-operation against the all crimes under international law.
I make these points not unduly to broaden the debate, but rather to seek to underline and emphasise the distinctive role which Ireland can and should play as a member of the international community, a role which Ireland retains and should exercise in its own right as well as in its EU capacity.
In all of these efforts Ireland must seek to be a voice in the world for restraint, for human rights, for international justice, security and peace.
We also need to look at international and domestic law to see if it needs to be updated to cope with the new type of terrorism we are now facing.
The United Nations Charter which was approved at the end of the Second World War envisaged situations where one state or group of states might be in conflict with another state or group of states. It clearly did not envisage a situation where a group within one country, or many countries might wage war against another state, even from within that state itself.
It certainly did not envisage having to deal with the sort of group that is suspected of being behind these outrages. It may well be that the organisation headed by Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the attacks, as many people suspect. We will have to see what evidence can be produced to that effect but his charge sheet is already very long.
But what we can be sure of is that whatever organisation was responsible had members and resources spread across a number of countries. What we are dealing with now is a totally new form of terrorism. Terrorists have formed their own multi-national networks and present an unprecedented challenge to us all.
We must also review our perceptions of what terrorist organisations are now capable of. If a terrorist organisation based across a number of poor, less developed countries is capable of displaying the level of organisation, sophistication and diabolical cleverness necessary to destroy the twin towers of the Word Trade Centres in New York, penetrate the Pentagon and take more than 5,000 lives, can we lightly dismiss the possibility of biological attacks or even a nuclear attack in the future?
We must be strong and united in our efforts to defeat multi-national terrorism but we must also seek to address the sort of conditions in which terrorism thrives.
If I can borrow and adapt a phrase used by the British Labour Party in regard to crime, 'we must be tough on terrorism, but tough on the causes of terrorism as well'.
Terrorism has taken a heavy toll in this country over the past three decades and our fragile peace remains under threat from heavily armed para-military organisations. Given what we have seen in the past week, it is surely now time for all these organisations to make a complete break with the past and put the murderous practices of terrorism behind them for good.
The difference between flying a plane into the World Trade Centre or leaving a lorry bomb outside of Canary Wharf is essentially the scale of the deaths caused. The pain and suffering and sense of loss of the family of a victim is the same whether their loved one died in New York at the hands of Islamic terrorists or in London, Belfast or Dublin at the hands of Irish terrorists.
In the aftermath of last week's events, the paramilitary organisations and their political associates may find the world a less sympathetic environment in which to exist. Last month Gerry Adams spoke of Northern Ireland being at the crossroads.
But the Republican Movement is also at the crossroads and must decide which direction it is now going to take. It can follow up the first tentative steps it has taken along the democratic road and move to full membership of the democratic family with all the opportunities and responsibilities that entails. Or it can choose to continue to exist in the twilight zone between democracy and terrorism, where it will use democracy one day and paramilitary thuggery the next.
I would urge the Republican Movement to cross their Rubicon, to state fully, unequivocally and unconditionally that their war is over, that they are fully wedded to the democratic system and that they will ensure the early decommissioning of their paramilitary weapons.
