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Will
the shock and awe to be unleashed on the people of
Iraq rate a mention in moments of casual conversation
between our local politicians and officials of the
Bush administration in the White House today?
How
will they avoid it? Will party whips move among them
urgently muttering---"Don't mention the war"?
Will
shifty thoughts tip-toe across their minds as their
hosts lecture them with stern benignity about the
urgent necessity to renounce the use of force and
embrace the rule of law?
Will
there be a shuffle of embarrassment, eyes downcast
to the carpet, as some remember the City Hall a couple
of Saturdays back amidst a vast throng abuzz with
fervour against war on Iraq? Will they feel a tremble
of unease at the thought that just along the corridor
or in an office on the floor above, those they have
come to for endorsement of their credentials as peace-makers
are making final arrangements for the mass obliteration
of conscript soldiers and collateral citizenry?
Will
any Sinn Feiner, Women's Coalitionist, SDLPer or Unionist
of any stripe shout out---Not in my name! Maybe. But
maybe not.
The
message from today at the White House is that what
happens in Northern Ireland has no resonance with
the wider world. That there is no value or ideal contained
in the Good Friday Agreement, or for that matter in
disagreement with the Agreement, which is in any way
applicable to
consideration of the war on Iraq. That the issues
which arise here are ours alone, entirely local, uniquely
distinctive. That we can make clean separation between
our struggles---however we configure our struggle---and
the hopes and aspirations of the rest of humanity.
That we are a petty
provincial people, from time to time ferocious with
each other in our internal squabble but each putting
our best face forward when looking to be patronised
by the powerful outside, twisting our caps in clammy
hands as we deferentially sing dumb about the propensity
of our patron to rampage murderously in other people's
homeplaces.
It's
this determined exceptionalism which has made our
petty provincial problem so intractable. It's because
we conventionally construct our politics solely around
the idea of communal identify, that we express ourselves
in politics and in public life generally exclusively
by reference to the local
religious community to which, as we say, we "belong"---and
what a telling word that is---it's mainly on this
account that a solution has proven so damnably difficult
to discover.
We
cannot solve the problems of sectarianism by setting
out to solve the problems of sectarianism only. When
we say that first we must agree on how "the two
communities" might live amicably alongside one
another before we can move on to deeper, wider or
just different matters, we imprison ourselves inside
the sectarian categories which we purport to wish
to abolish. It's
when we find a sense of ourselves which isn't dependent
on local circumstance, when we relate to people and
issues across the wider world, it's then we begin
to sense what we share with one another, too.
The
euphoria---it's not too strong a word---which engulfed
the rally on February 15th had to do with a feeling
of liberation from the constriction of local politics,
with the heady sense of being at one with millions
the world over, as well as with the appalling specifics
of the Iraqi situation.
The
day after February 15th, a New York Times editorial
writer observed that perhaps there are still two superpowers
on the planet after all---the US administration and
world public opinion. At City Hall we were part of
a superpower. Today, our politicans are as supplicants
at the court of the
other superpower.
It's
the superpower we can all be part of which offers
the best hope for the world, including our own little
patch of the world.
This
article was also published in the March 13 edition
of the Belfast Telegraph and is carried here with
the permission of the author.
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