All the baseless accusations in the world cannot change the fact that the US does not torture or condone torture, suggests George Dempsey.
I know, even before I write this, that I'm being unfair, but it does take the Irish to create a moral crisis out of a fantasy. I'm told that, once again, the witless radicals are out in force (at least, vocally), protesting that, by allowing official US flights through Shannon, the Irish Government is complicit in war crimes.
I've been gone from Ireland for some time but all this moral outrage is familiar from a decade and a half ago when I was still the political officer at the American embassy in Dublin. At that time, during the Gulf War, the protests were aimed at our troop transport landing in Shannon to refuel en route to the war zone.
In justification of his government's position, Charles Haughey announced to the Dáil (with some satisfaction it seemed to me, then, as I sat up in the diplomatic visitors' area) that all such American flights were being charged "full commercial rates". Should I mention that tiny Luxembourg offered not just to waive landing fees for our aircraft but to refuel them without charge?
Particularly offensive at the time, it seems, was the sight of American soldiers in combat fatigues walking about on Ireland's neutral soil - as I remember one protester putting it, America's "armed mercenaries" (nice one, that) parading through the aisles of Shannon's duty-free area. But, then, when the war was over and we brought our soldiers home, we arranged for them to be cleared through US Customs at point of embarkation so that, once they landed in the US, they could go directly from the planes to their waiting families.
This meant that, for any planes refuelling in Shannon, the soldiers had to remain on board. The local manager of Aer Rianta protested indignantly - not just to us at the embassy but once even buttonholing then-secretary of defence Dick Cheney on a layover at Shannon - that our soldiers were being unfairly prevented from spending their money on Irish goodies. So much for offending Ireland's purity.
This time it seems the brouhaha is about rendition and the secret prisons which the CIA has, supposedly, been running in eastern Europe. The subject has dominated Condoleezza Rice's visit to Europe or, at least, the press conferences.
Are the concerns expressed genuine and grounded?
Or is this just one more tiresome instance of American readiness to accept moral responsibility being confronted by European sanctimonious grandstanding?
One German spokesman put it this way: in light of its terrible past, today's Europe pursues "human rights at any cost". Think about that for a moment. Then consider this: "Human rights are secured by the rule of law which is secured by enforcement." Until human beings turn into angels, there will be an ongoing need for violence.
This is simple reality. Let's do try to be honest.
Does this mean that, under certain extreme circumstances, torture is allowed? Absolutely not. Torture remains, under any circumstances, abhorrent and impermissible.
Does it mean that suspected terrorists can be snatched up and returned to their home countries for interrogation? You bet it does.
No American interrogator, however skilled, can be as efficacious as those interrogators who bring to the job intuitive understanding of the suspect's culture, specific knowledge of his associations and family, and the comfort of not just his native language but his dialect.
Does this demand that the US government monitor renditions to ensure that what takes place is interrogation and not torture? Right again. And this is precisely what the US government does.
Condoleezza Rice could not have been more explicit: "Torture or conspiracy to torture is wrong. It is a violation of US law and of America's international obligations, and the US does not torture or condone torture. This legal prohibition applies to US personnel whether at home or abroad."
All the baseless accusations in the world cannot change these facts and, still, the morally obtuse outrage continues.
In the meanwhile, we hear witnesses at the trial of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad speaking of being stripped and gang-raped, of beatings that went on for hours, of shredders used on humans, of broken bones and backs, of being forced to watch the torture and execution of fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and children.
So - while such heroic Soviet-era ex-cons as Václav Havel and Adam Michnik support the war (as does José Ramos-Horta) - just what precisely are you western Europeans so all het up about? Bogus accusations out of an infantile leftist fantasyland. Isn't that just marvellous?
As someone once said, "Plus ça change..."
George Dempsey is a retired American career diplomat and the author of From the Embassy, a study of anti-Americanism in Ireland, published in 2004