Michael D. Higgins probably spoke for a lot of misguided Irish people with his recent Dβil outburst over the killings of captured Taliban prisoners at Mazar-e-Sharif - which merely shows that living within a protectorate can make the protected ones forget the reality which is thereby kept at bay. Posturing about neutrality, about the moral delinquencies of the US, especially in war - these are qualities most abundant in the polities which depend totally on the US for their defence, and traditionally none more so than this one.
I don't know who Michael D.Higgins expected to take the surrender of the Taliban POWs who mutinied when they thought they could get away with it; I dare say he wasn't volunteering his own doughty services. It is - though no doubt he is aware of this - one of the usages of war that a soldier is allowed one surrender only, and if he or his colleagues employ that flag of surrender for military advantage, all may then be killed.
Last resort
Pleasant? No, it's not; but nothing about war is pleasant. War is the last resort, that point at which the rules which bind civilisation together are dissolved. All shared commandments are suspended, all common civilities abolished, all declared decencies dissolved. A threadbare fabric from the lush quilt of pre-war society is retained, only begrudgingly, and by prior agreement; and not using flags of surrender for military advantage is part of that thin material. The price to be paid for dishonouring the terms of such a surrender must be steep, and by advance agreement from all sides; for it is in everyone's interest that a surrender is what it purports to be, otherwise there is war without quarter, to the bloody, brutal end.
I don't expect Michael D.Higgins to understand what I'm about to say, but what the US and the Northern Coalition did in chopping the mutinous Taliban prisoners to pieces was in the longer term merciful; in the longer term humane; and at the time was intellectually and morally irreproachable. Its logic is that future surrenders by Taliban not merely are delivered earlier, but are then honoured, with considerable savings in human life on all sides.
(Yes, the removal of gold fillings from dead Taliban by Northern Alliance seems, well, de trop; but after all, these events occurred in Afghanistan, not in Galway West. How precisely would the noble TD have persuaded the Northern Alliance soldiers to behave by the civilised rules of his constituency when Afghan warriors have behaved according to the rather more vigorous code of Kandahar North Central since Alexander the Great's time?)
I fear for the mental health of the TD for Galway West, and for the many who think like him, who believe that this earth is a kindly place: that if we are merciful to people, and pretend that there is no such thing as real evil, then we have no thing to fear, provided we send out food parcels to the hungry, and scold tyrants when they misbehave.
Political will
Wrong, wrong, wrong; one hundred per cent wrong, lethally wrong, totally wrong, terminally wrong. For we have to recognise that evil exists in different forms; when it is purely of the domestic variety, it is almost impossible to create the political will among outside powers to do anything about it. But when it is of the far rarer, expansionist and aggressive variety, the world has no choice but to join forces in fighting it and suppressing it.
And this is why Michael D.Higgins is likely to be yanking at his shirt collar and puffing out his chest in coming times. Because this war is not ending in Afghanistan. It is a world war, unlike any we have seen before; and because its early stages were marked by appeasement under a Clinton regime, whose conduct - especially towards Somalia - appears more craven, more pusillanimous, more cowardly, more diseased by the day, the tentacles of world terrorism were allowed to grow in a way which would not have been permitted under more robust leadership.
There is evidence, growing more compelling by the month, that the bin Laden network could be the creation of Saddam Hussein. It is not conclusive yet, to be sure: but that is the nature of terrorism. It hides behind the uncertainties which inevitably exist when the first part of any terrorist project is to conceal its existence. Moreover, terrorists depend on the bien pensant instincts of the liberal intelligentsia. These instincts place the most benign interpretations on the motives and deeds of terrorists, and the worst possible interpretation on policies enacted by democratic governments to oppose terrorism.
War will spread
The US will finish its business in Afghanistan, and will then shift its gaze elsewhere. It faces evil more complete, more absolute, more bizarre, than anything ever imagined in the most lurid pages of fiction. We are truly in the realm of discovery of new things, both in politics and human psychology, and in such a realm, it is best to stick with friends. The war will spread, and dictatorships elsewhere will feel the warm breeze of incoming cruise missiles and the all-seeing eye of Predator unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.
A long and complex road lies ahead, one which will inevitably be littered with blunders and bloodshed. That is the nature of war. The Government (Brian Cowen in particular) has been strong and decisive in support of the US. Good. Let our policy remain so, no matter the stern trials ahead, and regardless of those who would attempt to fight the blazing inferno of Islamic fascism by lightly breaking a pious wind over it.