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Ahern looks past morals in his support of Bush
By Joe Horgan
IT might seem odd to be writing about the American election in a newspaper serving the Irish community in Britain and it is not done out of any insight into Irish-America.
It just seems that if the USA is intent on enforcing ‘freedom’ wherever it chooses, and I can’t help thinking that far finer minds than George Bush’s have sought down the years to define what freedom is, then the world is allowed an opinion on their internal politics. What they do there is their business, but what they do elsewhere is ours.
It is not as if the American Presidential election was of interest merely to those who are political junkies or who like and admire much of what the US stands for.
 George Bush has managed to polarise the opinions of not only his own country but that of opinion around the world. He has seen fit to do battle with those whose ultimate leader brooks no reasoning, an angry god, by referring to his own ultimate leader who also seems to brook no reason, his angry god.
Once again we are back in territory so familiar to those who have observed Ireland down the years, where state violence is different from any other violence. Where terror is only ever a tool of the enemy no matter how difficult it becomes to discern just who is terrorising who.
Of course America has suffered and the kind of men who behead other people whilst recording it on video have moved beyond the limits of humanity. No one seeks to justify that just as anyone who ever said there was a background, a history, even a reason, behind IRA violence ever sought to justify pub bombings, or Enniskillen or Omagh.
Yet when John Major claimed that there should be a little less understanding and a lot more condemnation, he was harking back to the usual mindset of the reactionary in trying to simplify a complex world. Bush’s coalition of the willing against the axis of evil. It sounds like a children’s game minus the subtleties.
No one is seeking to denigrate what happened to America on the day the twin towers were brought down, or to downplay the psychological effect on a nation founded on liberal principles and free citizens. Those lives were cut short in a truly horrendous and cruel fashion, with people leaping to their deaths and thinking thoughts that are beyond the comprehension and imagination of those of us who merely watched.
But what of the deaths of the estimated 100,000 Iraqis who have lost their lives since the US entered Baghdad, moving with haste to secure oil fields rather than lives? What kind of obscenity are those deaths, primarily those of civilians and therefore, in most reckonings, innocents?
Does the perpetration of evil on American soil in some twisted way justify the explosion of violence in Iraq? If, in some way, it does, then most of the world does not seem able to see how.
At the very least, at the very, very least, and it is hard to be equitable when discussing the regime of George W. Bush, the current international situation is a moral minefield. It was probably ever thus, but, if nothing else, Bush has an amazing ability to polarize opinions.
Many of us watched and listened with growing disbelief and despair as it became clear he was getting back in. I have no hesitation in saying that for the first time in my life I paid close, close attention to a US election.
Like many around the world I just thought, “oh no,” on that Wednesday morning, even though I live in rural Ireland and have never even been to the USA.
I didn’t really think about what it might mean to the hills of West Cork, but I did think about what it might mean to the larger world and indeed what kind of world we’d all have four years from now.
And what did Bertie Ahern, who is actually paid to have a full grasp on global matters, international politics and Irish life, think? It is best to try and quote him in full: “Looking at policies in the manifestos of both candidates, had Senator Kerry been elected, US multi-nationals abroad would have been subject to new taxation, which would have had a significant impact on the Irish economy. I would have begun immediately a process of lobbying to ensure that such a tax would not have been introduced.
“From an Irish point of view, on the straight policies of it, by having the Bush administration, in terms of economic policy, we’re in a stronger position.” Now how’s that for moral leadership?
Now there may be those who, like this present government, believe that Ireland is no longer a nation, but just an economy. Fair enough. Yet I still find it strange that the job Bertie is therefore getting paid for, the protection of Irish jobs and money, he expects the American electorate to do for him.
There will be others, thank God, who believe that Ireland is still more than that.
But is this what we have come to? Whatever about Iraq, world opinion, the planned environmental pillage of the last wilderness refuge that is Alaska, Americans with no health cover, the rights of homosexuals, the lives of the American poor, we are alright with Bush because he is slipping us a few bob?
For so long, due to our history and the ways of our society, many people have viewed Ireland as a special place for the human spirit. At the very least, seeing the struggles to profile the Irishness of hostages in Iraq, we have been seen as honest neutrals. But now? Are we now the moral beggars of Europe?
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