It was good that the Taoiseach laid a wreath at the Malvinas War Memorial for the 655 Argentinian soldiers, sailors and airmen who were killed 20 years ago next spring in the Falklands War. Of all the wars of the past century, that seemed to be one of the most futile and purposeless, over islands which are almost uninhabitable unless you are a penguin.
The idiocy of the Argentinian attack, just after John Knott the British Defence Minister, had announced that the British were going to scrap its carrier fleet in the near future, passes all belief. If the Argentinians had waited a year, they could simply have taken the islands with a walking stick, with no prospect of a task-force to retrieve them.
End of democracy
The Falklands would have been the Malvinas for all time, which wouldn't have been a bad thing in the least: except, of course, that the criminal-junta in Argentina would probably have remained in power to this day by popular acclamation, and whatever vestiges of decency and democracy which still survived in 1982 would by now have vanished completely.
The association between territory and identity is a puzzling one. Why should those urbane and sun-kissed people of Buenos Aires yearn for a year-round version of the Belmullet peninsula on a really bad winter's day? One doesn't need to understand this passionate attachment, merely to accept it is so. Does not north Kerry mysteriously pine for possession of Ballymena? So the Argentinians had common sense, attachment and geography on their side, but they did not have right, and worse from their point of view, they did not have wisdom.
They deployed forces who were reaching the end of their terms as conscripts; and if you want to discover the meaning of "reluctance", any Argentinian teenager who, instead of returning home at the end of his period of military service, finds himself being sent off to fight and possibly die amid the polar bogs of the Falklands in midwinter, will effortlessly define it for you.
Even at this remove, the sinking of the Belgrano seems a shocking, dreadful act, and the loss of life involved perfectly inexcusable; but that is civilian-speak. War is shocking, dreadful: and the Argentinian junta had not the least idea of what it is to fight a war against hardened, ruthless professionals, rather than your own quaking civilian population. After the Belgrano, and the loss of all those hundreds of poor men, it knew: yet in my mind, the sinking remains unjustifiable and unnecessary.
Turning point
It marked a turning point in Ireland's relationship with Britain, and indeed with Argentina: alone of the EEC, we assumed our traditional stance of neutral-against-Britain - in Olivia O'Leary's trenchant phrase, once again we were "Britain's official non -friend", and suddenly, Argentina's chum. To be seen to be siding with a fascist junta against the democracy which was reclaiming its rightful territory and liberating a people who had been conquered by force of arms, is a fairly melancholy achievement.
But out of that dismal distinction, can we not weave some gold? Though I dislike the much-trumpeted conceit that Ireland stalks the diplomatic world like a colossus, punching well above its weight, I can't help wondering whether or not we might be able to make some contribution to the resolution of the ridiculous impasse over the Falklands. After all, the British don't want the bloody things, the British army and RAF loathe their garrison duties there, and the Argentinians still yearn for them.
So here's my solution. The British sign them over to us, which is fine; the British have handed over rainy lands they were sick and tired of to us before. (If they could find a way of lumbering us with the North, by God it would). We then lease the islands to the Argentinians, acting as guarantors of the liberties of the islanders. That'll be easy: Argentinians don't actually want to live or rule there, they just want to see their flag flying over los Malvinas; and you could indeed fly an Argentinian flag over Tumbledown, and no-one would see it from one year to the next, apart that is from the occasional shepherd courting his girlfriend, a winsome young merino called Dolly, (who has loads and loads of sisters, if you're interested).
Best friends
What do we gain from this? Best-friends-for-life status from both Buenos Aires and London, for a start. Dear me, we could almost name our price in terms of favours. Maybe we would get mineral exploration rights, which we could trade off to either party, at a huge price.
However, we might have to appoint a governor general there: I nominate Liam Lawlor, a man whose many talents equip him admirably for a 20-year stint in Port Stanley.
And though the Falklanders themselves may draw the line at that, they must surely welcome an ending to the farcical state of semi-siege which prevents scheduled airline services from running, or their having access to a proper hospital.
So maybe from the acorn of the wreath the Taoiseach laid for the unfortunate dead of Argentina, a great oak of lasting settlement could come. How pleasant that would be: and how pleasant too if he could feel one day free to lay a wreath for the British soldiers killed in the Falklands, including Trooper O'Connell from Tipperary and Trooper Begley from Donegal. And in this context; is there any reason on earth or in heaven why our ambassador in London still does not lay a wreath on Armistice Sunday?