If those nice people in the American Embassy wanted to know about the real face of Sinn Féin, they should have attended the anti-US demonstration in the centre of Dublin last weekend, writes Kevin Myers
It was a trip to Doolallyville, 1968. That splendid fellow Cllr Larry O'Toole declared: "We will rid the world of tyrants like Bush and Blair. . .Comrades, it is a very important today to send out a clear message to the Dublin government: Shannon must be closed off to US warplanes". As long as international solidarity remained, "imperialism is doomed."
Firstly, to deconstruct Shinner-speak, that term "Dublin government", rather than "the Government", is not accidental: it was probably only by the greatest restraint that he did not spittingly refer to it as a parcel of Free State lackeys. Because whatever they say in public - where they spout bare-faced lies - and no matter how agreeable they seem when being colonically irrigated by various governments, Shinners detest those who hold office in Leinster House. They regard all Irish governments as traitorous inheritors of a usurped authority. The only Dáil they genuinely recognise is that of 1918; the only tradition they honour is the armed one that stands in unbroken continuity from the 1916 Rising.
Moreover, I like the word "tyrants" to describe Bush and Blair. The former was re-elected, fairly and squarely, last year; the latter will probably - alas, because I despise the man - be re-elected this spring. Tyrants don't do elections - or if they do, they win them the way that Saddam Hussein or Ill Kill Him or whatever his name in North Korea is: they win them by polling 99 per cent, ad infinitum, until replaced by a son, who does better than daddy by securing 99.99 per cent.
Of course, one can't blame the Shinners for not understanding too much about democracy. They never bothered to consult the electorate about their stupid, squalid war, and they still think that a vote for them is the same thing as a mandate, which it is not. Governments get mandates, not opposition parties. It's a bit subtle, I know, but it's the way the real democratic world works. Not that I'd expect Cllr O'Toole - is that the first line of a limerick, by the way? - to understand too much about such a complex thing as democracy.
His fellow platform-speaker, Joe Higgins TD, certainly doesn't. There aren't many people in Ireland who would support the anti-democratic insurgent forces in Iraq, but the TD for Tallaght is one of them. Because the truth is that, after eight million voters showed the world what Arab courage actually consists of, real democracy is taking root in Iraq - which is why the insurgents are now targeting Iraqis. Moreover, thousands of young men are risking their lives joining the security forces of new Iraq - and yet here we have this pathetic, vile and bitter little voice in Ireland backing their enemies.
To be sure, he admitted that he didn't back every single deed by the insurgents - so it's good to know he probably draws the line at beheading. He might drop the Bigleys a line about that. No doubt insurgents in Iraq fret about whether their latest terrorist deed - blowing up a school bus of Shia children, say, or driving into a queue of teenage recruits for the police service - gets the Higgins nod of approval. It can be a frightful worry for a chap, thinking that that such a mighty moral sage might disapprove. Keeps a fellow awake at night.
Next came Faha Ansari, president of the Federation of Islamic Students in Ireland, who called on all there to "vocalise our support for the resistance." No doubt he did not mean those who murdered our fellow Irishwoman, Margaret Hassan, or the suicide bombers who blew the headquarters of both the International Red Cross and the UN apart, or the beheaders of scores of innocents, or the slaughterers of hundreds of Muslim worshippers by Sunni terrorists.
So who did he mean? And what on earth was Trevor Sargent doing in such company? It's one thing to oppose the use of the Shannon stop-over by US planes, as he does, and from his point of view, reasonably enough, though - naturally - being an ardent pro-American, I support it. But it's quite another to share a platform with those who back an insurgency which is led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Islamo-fascists and beheaders against the fledgling democracy of Iraq.
For is it not part of the Green philosophy that they do not live in a world of moral sophistry, in which one can draw some moral distinction between the honourable opponents of democracy and the dishonourable ones? Surely a Green leader cannot, under any pretext, be seen to support the oil-well burning insurgents of Iraq by associating with their grisly friends here?
We are approaching the second anniversary of the death of Corporal Ian Malone, Irish Guards, RIP, killed in action in Basra. I am not such an otiose fool as to declare that the freedom of Iraq was worth such a sacrifice. But I do know I would rather have spent an evening in the company of such a fine young man, with his clear notion of what was right and wrong, and what was freedom and what was not, than a second with any of the wretches who last weekend sullied the Dublin air with their sick and perverted support for sectarian fascists whose only desire is to decapitate Iraqi democracy at birth.