KEVIN MYERS:
"What precautions have been taken against terrorist attack at Shannon Airport?" was the question I asked on Wednesday morning. Even as this newspaper was being distributed, came the answer: None. A single individual was able to do up to € ½ million damage to a US Navy plane parked
the airport.
Is anyone in Aer Rianta going to pay the price for this shocking but perfectly predictable breach of security? A year and a quarter have elapsed since 9/11, the US is the target for international terrorism in every country in the world, so Shannon should have been on high alert against sabotage - terrorist or political - because of the controversy over US aircraft landing there. We know now the zeal of its guardians.
There is still in Ireland the banal belief that we are immune to the real forces of the real world. Indeed, the defenders of this worthless piece of moral inertia, our "neutrality", actually had the nerve to laud it in the aftermath of Holocaust Day.
Even young people, though they know all about the Holocaust, seem proud of "Neutrality". The word is uttered as if some all-redeeming goodness were there invoked and there embodied.
Neutrality bankrupt
It's a question worth asking, if only to explore the moral realities of "neutrality": but what if the Irish people had discovered the existence of the Final Solution in say 1943? Would we have acted? Or would de Valera, in that bleating whinge which makes his speeches so very irksome, have uttered some trite rubbish about the nationalist people of Northern Ireland suffering comparable privations? We know now that the Holocaust provides all the refutation that "neutrality" requires. We mightn't have been able to do much: but to have enabled the allies to provide air cover over the south-western approaches from Foynes would have been something.
Yet neutralism is back in vogue. And whereas it's one thing to argue against the practicality of war in confronting Saddam, there surely can be no argument against threatening it. He has been in repeated violation of UN resolutions. He has not disarmed when ordered to do so, and he actually expelled UN-authorised weapons inspectors.
So who could ever take the US seriously as a guarantor of UN resolutions if it were to back down now? And though I was until recently reluctant to accept that the use of force against Iraq could be justified, Hans Blix's report has gone far to destroy that reluctance. What option has the US now but to proceed on the path which Bush has laid out, until Saddam is verifiably disarmed, one way or another.
No, I don't like the idea of US/UK armies forcibly entering Baghdad; but it is the way of history to leave us with poor choices and difficult challenges; and after the horrors of the 20th century, we know that the failure to accept those challenges will inevitably draw us onwards until the only signpost remaining points to Treblinka, Belsen and Srebrenica.
If we were to prevent the US from using Shannon as a stop-over for reinforcements to the Gulf, it would in effect mean that we were siding with Saddam. Shannon stands today where Foynes stood 60 years ago, both geographically and symbolically. We know now from history that neutrality in the face of tyranny is passive compliance in that tyranny: failure to oppose the Reich of Hitler or the even more murderous Reich of Stalin should have told us of the moral bankruptcy that underpins "neutrality".
The case against Saddam was made most forcefully by the Egyptian weapons inspector, Mohammed El Baraddei. He attacked Saddam for not providing the information the UN sought, adding: "The window of opportunity may not be open for very much longer." As it happens, he wants more time for Saddam to disarm. But he agrees: Saddam must be disarmed. And the most effective way to avoid war is to apply military pressure, which is precisely what the US is doing at the moment. But it can only hold its forces on station for so long: and unless compliance has been achieved within a reasonable amount of time, after over a decade of detailed, systematic non-compliance, then so be it. Send in the tanks.
The usual suspects
The usual crowd - the Free The Colombia Three, anti-GM, Israel-hating, US-bashing, neutrality-revering, whingeniks - will denounce the US. Let them. It would be a sad day indeed when freedom were guarded by such people. Given the chance, no doubt they would neutrally have watched the Holocaust.
And we cannot be neutral in this conflict. For Saddam is a genocidal monster, the only leader since the second World War to have used poison gas on his own citizens and to have fired ballistic missiles against foreign cities.
Though I'd infinitely prefer for Saddam and his vile sons instead are simply put to death by some Iraqi generals, if it comes to war, I trust it will be as swift and bloodless as possible. For in the van of the British forces will be the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, which is probably 95 per cent Irish, and the Irish Guards, most of whom weren't born in Ireland, but are of Irish-exile families.
Realising the need for armed action is not to welcome it: the prospect of a battle for Baghdad is too terrible for words. Perhaps those US geniuses who invented cruise missiles and smart bombs have worked a way of taking a city peacefully. We may find the answer to this question sooner than we want.