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On
Saturday, January 25th, Martin McGuinness told listeners
to the BBC Radio Ulster Inside Politics programme
that he is opposed to the forthcoming war on Iraq.
“I am opposed to war in Iraq,” he said.
“I do not believe that the situation that is
before us is a healthy situation. My concern about
a war in Iraq centres around the concern that people
will be killed in that war - whether they be Iraqi
civilians, or American soldiers or even a British
soldier.” As we say in Derry, all of this concern
for civilians and British soldiers is “a quare
change” from McGuinness’s earlier vintage,
such as when he promised “a continuation of the
struggle and the certain deaths of British soldiers”
at Bodenstown in 1973. His recent embarrassment on
US radio, when another 1970s gaff, this time stating
that nosey bystanders had their injuries coming to
them when caught up in explosions, also springs to
mind.
But
McGuinness’s humanitarian imaginings stretched
further than the oncoming conflict as he expressed
his misgivings for the future: “the big difficulty
about war in Iraq given the state of play between
East and West in the world is the concern that I have
that we could conceivably be facing into a situation
where the world could be at war for the next five
decades.”
The
irony of Martin McGuinness’ concern over a potentially
decades-long conflict barely requires explanation.
After all, Irish people don’t need to look as
far away as the Middle East to see what a war, characterised
by its lack of objectives, might look like. Indeed,
the IRA is fond of reminding its supporters that it’s
war hasn’t ended after three decades, even if
it did take seats in Stormont. Martin McGuinness could
teach George W. Bush a thing or two about hoodwinking
people into believing that even phoney wars can last
a long time.
“I'm
not talking about a war on the scale of the First
or Second World War,” he said, “ but I do
think that there could be huge conflict in the world
for the next five decades if this issue is not dealt
with sensibly… the view of Sinn Fein is one of
total opposition to war in Iraq.” So, for McGuinness,
a future of self-perpetuating low-intensity conflict
would be immoral. Unless bus-drivers from Derry happen
to be on the receiving end of it, of course.
As
McGuinness’s words hit the airwaves, another
burst of party double-speak was unleashed, this time
via the internet. The Sinn Féin e mail service,
RM Distribution, which delivers party blah straight
into subscribers’ inboxes, this weekend celebrated
the recent manifestation of anti-war sentiment. Under
the title “Worldwide Anti-War Protests”.
The statement described the previous weeks rallies
across the globe in protest at any possible attack
on Iraq. It described how speakers at anti-war rallies
in the United States claimed that ” Bush was
killing the American way of life in this war for oil,”
stating that
“the
marches amounted to colourful opposition to the
US government's drive to war with Iraq.”
It
also reported how the anti-war march in San Francisco
included a radical component:
“Later
in the afternoon, one thousand people joined a radical
anti-capitalist breakaway march and militantly marched
through the financial centre, smashing windows and
graffitting the San Francisco Chronicle building,
the British Consulate, CitiCorp, the Immigration
& Naturalization Service building, Starbucks
and Victoria's Secret.”
Doubtless,
should any similar protest occur in Ireland, Sinn
Féin will make sure that the anti-capitalist
element won’t break too many windows. After all,
during the numerous anti-British riots that have occurred
in Derry since 1996, Sinn Féiners, including
Martin McGuinness, worked hard to protect corporate
property, preventing protestors from venting their
anger on banks, bars and buses.
The
statement also reports that “in the Netherlands,
about one hundred civil inspectors gained access to
the grounds of Volkel military air base in the southeast
of the country. They cut through the perimeter fence
in several places at once.”
The
implied message in the statement is more interesting
than what it appears to say at face value, and the
hidden meaning is that is that it is okay to
be radical in the United States, where breaking windows
and writing slogans on news paper offices is acceptable.
So is breaking into Dutch air force bases. After all,
such bases do contain “weapons of mass destruction”.
Of course, the moral objection in this case would
be against mass-produced, factory-manufactured weapons
of mass destruction. We can only presume that Provisional
IRA exports, such as mortars and ANFO car bombs, aren’t
included under this descriptive title.
Now
that Sinn Féin has been kicked out of Stormont,
the party lacks direction, and this is revealed in
the party’s uncomfortable relationship with the
Bush administration. This has resulted in the transformation
of its “foreign policy”, which has almost
overnight mutated from confident conservatism into
a facile and uncertain radicalism, as expressed in
these recent attempts to hang on the coat-tails of
the global anti-war movement. While Sinn Féin
goes cap in hand to its corporate allies in the US,
party hacks and apparatchiks like Aengus Ó
Snódaigh take adavantage of growing anti-war
sentiment in the 26 counties.
Ó
Snódaigh is opposed “to the Irish government
decision to allow US planes to over flight and refuel
on Irish soil.” At a rally in Shannon, the
Sinn Féin spokesperson on International Affairs
and TD stated the party's opposition to the use
of the airport as an "immoral, unconstitutional,
and illegal" staging post in advance of a war
on Iraq.”
He
declared: "One of the main reasons why successive
generations of Irish people fought for independence
was so that we would no longer be embroiled in Britain's
imperial wars. Now an Irish government seeks to
embroil us in the new imperialism as represented
by the drive to war by the US and British governments."
But
now that Sinn Féin is reasserting its opposition
to “US imperialism”, it’s worthwhile
recalling how the then Sinn Féin mayor of the
city, Cathal Crumley, shared a platform in Derry City
with ex-US President Bill Clinton IN May 2001 (Gerry
Adams sat right behind Clinton at the event). That
morning, “militants”, as Sinn Féin
would describe them, pelted Clinton with eggs as he
visited Magee College. That afternoon, Mayor Crumley
saluted Clinton, and then glared at the same “militant”
protestors as they voiced their opposition to the
arms trade and sanctions against Iraq.
Now
that Clinton’s power is gone Sinn Féin’s
is diminishing as well and, from Colombia to Shannon,
the party is finding itself at odds with the world’s
sole super-power. Nowadays the political wheels aren’t
being greased as generously as they had been before
under Clinton’s Democrats. But the party’s
sudden turn toward insincere radicalism points to
a more substantial problem - that, in matters of policy
of any description, it cannot appear consistent.
We
can only wonder what Sinn Féin’s position
would be had the Democrats won the narrowly-contested
presidential election of 2000. The September 11 atrocities
would certainly still have occurred, no matter which
party was in power, and, given the Democrats’
record, they wouldn’t have had much difficulty
in overcoming the moral qualms that they are now expressing
about the war on Iraq. And Sinn Féin might
still be in Stormont, had their Democrat friends been
able to swing the political balance in their favour.
But they weren’t. They lost that election, and
the political gravity changed for Sinn Féin
and the IRA. And their contradictory, hypocritical
attitude toward the present US government, and toward
the rest of us, is proof that they are unable to regain
their balance.
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