THIS MAY BE USA'S NORTHERN IRELAND - OR FAR WORSE
by James Drake
USA Today, October 4, 2001
When I heard George W. Bush declare war on terrorism, I couldnt help recalling the words of
the British home secretary who ordered troops into Northern Ireland in 1969. Easy enough to
send them in, he mused, anxiously, in his private diary. Getting them out may not be quite so
easy.
He was right. Our forces were supposed to be home by Christmas. They stayed 30 years. For
with their increasingly frantic response to each fresh atrocity by the Irish Republican Army
(IRA) our commanders managed only to fan the fires of hatred.
In the early 1970's, for example, the British interned suspected terrorists without trial. Later,
they took to shooting IRA men dead as they drove along quiet country back lanes, then erecting
roadblocks and claiming the men had failed to stop and submit to a routine search. Both
measures were effective in the short term, although inevitably, sometimes innocent people were
imprisoned, or the wrong guy assassinated. Ultimately, though, they served only to polarize
public opinion, making zealots out of the moderate majority.
So while I understand the Americans lust for revenge - actually, I share it - it worries me that
Bush often seems, from his rhetoric, to be stuck in te Ulster of the 1960s. Just as the IRA
murderers complained long and loud about imperialist oppression every time the Brits fouled up,
so I bet Osama bin Laden is willing the Great Satan to put a foot wrong. There are 1 billion
Muslims in the world, most of whom wouldnt even give bin Laden the time of day. But one
veiled woman manhandled at a military checkpoint, one smart bomb accidentally landing in
the middle of a crowded market square, and we could suddenly find ourselves facing a billion
angry soldiers.
Eventually, the British changed tactics. They did not escalate their response (to dip into
antiseptic NATO-speak) by surgically striking Irelands strategic installations every time
some bandit chief sought shelter across the border. Rather, they swapped information with the
Irish police and reached extradition agreements with the Dublin government that allowed the
deportation of such fugitives to face British justice. In the north, they recruited paid informers
(including some of this planets vilest scum) and infiltrated agents into the IRA. Armed with
precise intelligence, British commandos were able to liquidate or arrest tightly knit groups of
ideological fanatics who moved around too often to present a sitting target for an Exocet missile.
Meanwhile, satellite TV images of severed British limbs and grieving British orphans persuaded
a few of the deluded romantics abroad who had financed these self-styled Robin Hoods to close
their wallets for good.
Today, we have peace sorts, I suppose that peace might have come sooner if wed just given in.
Instead, each time a bomb decimated a bustling mainland shopping center or railway station, we
squared our shoulders and gritted our teeth and carried on. Nor did the general public demand
our soldiers recall as the military death toll roe. They understood that a man who takes the
Queens shilling may one day have to put his head above the parapet. Thats his job. The boys
who fought and died in the streets of Ulster understood that also and didnt quit the first time
one of them fell over and hurt his knee.
Do the Americans really understand that? Do they understand that firing rockets from a nice
safe distance may not be enough this time (if, indeed, it ever was)? And do they really
understand that Northern Ireland, with its booby traps, casual kneecappings and quotidian
savagery, was just a playground scuffle compared with the carnage that could await us in the
mountains and snow of Afghanistan?
Incidentally, British military historians can tell something about this place, too. Early in her
reign, the government of Queen Victoria - the George W. Bush of her day - dispatched a
supposedly elite force of 16,500, equipped with all of the latest long-range weaponry, to install
the puppet regime of its choice in Kabul. Just one of the Great White Empress Tommies made
it back to India. The other 16,449 were picked off by tribesmen on the hilltops wielding antique
rifles.
Will the U.S. public keep its nerve and will the U.S. army keep its discipline, when a Taliban
bullet shatters the first American skull? Or the 16,499th?
In any case, even if Osama bin laden surrenders tomorrow, the real war - the war for hearts and
minds - will still take decades to win. Im not really talking here about religion. In Northern
Ireland, Catholics dont hate Protestants. They hate them because the Protestants are the
descendants of English and Scottish settlers who have for centuries monopolized the best land,
the best schools, the best jobs. Religion provides both a sense of identity and a focus for hatred,
but it isnt the reason for that hatred.
By the same token, fundamentalist Islam has little to do with the Koran. It has everything to do,
say, with the little boy in the filthy Indonesian sweatshop who earns a couple of bucks per 12-
hour day sewing our designer sneakers and sports clothes.
In other words, fundamentalist Islam gives hope to the hopeless. Until someone can offer these
people something better than martyrs death, then the bin Ladens of this world will always find a
home - whether its in Afghanistan or Belfast.