Fling away the heart. Forget your softer passions. Stick to those hard things which your head tells you. Was it not a stupidly exuberant heart which caused me to say some months ago that we were living in a new age when fresh possibilities were opening up around us? Turk and Greek, Muslim and Jew, Gael and Gall were reaching accords, I declared, which could finally settle their ancient hatreds.
How could I believe such rubbish, even for the time it takes to write a single column? Is the heart so powerful that it can make a credulous fool of even the most cynical, so sharp that it can lobotomise even those who insist its steel has no edge? For this we all know: there is no accommodation between tribes which dispute the same acres and the same holy places. Hatreds that have been born over centuries will still be borne over the centuries to come. That is the human way. It is the Israeli way and the Palestinian way: it is bred in the blood and bone of Planter and Papist, of Turk and Greek, Hutu and Tutsi.
Helicopter gunships
Just as a new dispensation, sunspots or an improbable conjunction of stars and moon briefly appeared some months ago to be bringing ancient foes together, so now has the universe returned to its normal condition. Opposing fighter planes jostle each other in the air space of the Aegean; on the West Bank helicopter gunships demonstrate crowd-control tactics which speak volumes about the true feelings of the Israeli government towards Palestinians; and unionists prepare a programme which will see either themselves or Sinn Fein depart from the Executive.
The Great Lie of our time, conjured into existence along the corridors of Swedish universities, and nourished by decent peace-lovers everywhere, goes by the name of conflict/resolution. Yet there is no such thing. The words are winsome humbug. Where there is true conflict, there is no resolution, only hostility. But at its most surrogate form, hostility can nonetheless resemble peace as closely as a viral incubus can imitate the cells around it. Conflict can survive unspoken and unexpressed for years, so well and truly camouflaged that it is not even sensed by those who unwittingly nourish the virus during its long periods of passivity.
Is it not extraordinary that those who led the Bosnian wars were all veterans of the Communist party, all raised in the pan-tribal culture of old Yugoslavia? Who could have predicted 15 years ago that the most successful of all Communist countries was about to wade through a lake of blood, the leaders of the coming hecatomb being the very leaders and architects of political harmony?
To be sure, conflict can certainly be ended, not by resolution but by conquest and subjugation, often followed by expulsion. There are no problems of conflict in the Sudetenland or East Prussia because the German populations of those regions were either expelled or murdered in 1945; no ethnic conflicts in Smyrna because Orthodox Christians were despatched to the grave or to Greece; no ethnic problems in Crete because a comparable fate befell local Muslims.
Feel-good heresy
Deluded by the feel-good heresy of conflict resolution, we ignore the terrible truths available to us from history, and opt instead for sanctimoniousness, celebrating the failed and ineffectual as healers and bringers of peace. There is no more perfect example of this than the Dalai Lama, who remains in enduring exile while his people endure the internal exile of the truly powerless in their own country.
We might all applaud the way that the Dalai Lama forgives; but forgiving the robber while he is in your own house is unlikely to cause him to leave, even as he plunders your pantry and makes free with your daughters. Ask yourself: have aggressors anywhere at any time rewarded their victims' turning the other cheek with displays of regret, contrition, and apologetic retreat? Did Gordon Wilson's instant forgiveness of those who murdered his daughter Marie at Enniskillen 13 years ago next month save a single life or shorten the IRA war by a single day? Let us ask still harder questions. Which was more influential in bringing the IRA campaign to an end: internal remorse within the IRA, or intelligence leakage from the Northern security forces to loyalist terrorists, who then targeted and killed IRA leaders? Which was more effective in bringing about peace: the Sermon on the Mount or the Force Reconnaissance Unit?
Almost laughable
A dirty war was thus ended by dirty means, concluding with a fantastical and unworkable gunmen-in-government solution: the IRA now helps to run the state it tried for 30 years to overthrow by force of arms, and is expected to surrender those arms in exchange for being made school monitor. It would almost be laughable, only we know it is too darkly terrible for that.
Does all this not mean that sooner or later we must be brought back to our ancient starting position, Square One? Possibly. But do not despair. Square One doesn't necessarily mean war. The virus might well go into remission, hiding itself in the soft cellular tissue of cross-Border bodies, joint parliamentary committees and the common exhaustion which follows all wars. But it will linger on, as it does in Bosnia, in Jerusalem, the Aegean. Good will never end a war; only violence ever does. This is the lesson we do not give our children, which is proper. It is also the one we exclude from public discourse, which is stupid.