Why do I feel as if I've just got stuck into a farmpail of LSD or swallowed a wheelbarrow full of magic mushrooms the whole time these days? Can I be indulging in illegal drugs without knowing it? Or is it simply that my head is swimming because I've been coshed by PIN, namely, that deadly moral footpad, Pious Irish Neutralism?
Mind you, what else can it do but swim when it is mugged by morally uplifting homilies on the rule of law from that world-renowned legal expert Caomhghin O Caolain. "This is undoubtedly the most serious act of international military aggression within Europe since the end of the of the Second World War," he opined. "NATO has carried out these attacks in violation of international law and without reference to the United Nations."
Dear me. Dear, oh dear, oh dear me. Firstly, why do people say that events in Serbia are the most serious act of international aggression in Europe since the second World War, other than to reveal how ignorant they are of our continent's history? Have they forgotten the Soviet suppression of the rising in East Germany in 1947? And that was nothing, absolutely nothing, compared with the bloodbath in Hungary in 1956, when a thousand Soviet tanks invaded, ten of thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled. The Hungarian prime minister, Imry Nage, was then judicially murdered.
Czechoslovakia
We saw another act of international aggression in Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the movement towards democracy was again brutally crushed by Warsaw Pact tanks. In 1974, Turkey invaded and conquered half of Cyprus in an operation which was far bloodier than anything inflicted by NATO to date. The 1992 Serb-Croat war, with the destruction of Vukovar and the murder of its Croat citizens, exceeded in violence and brutality anything done by the alliance in Serbia. It also marked the debut of that fine fellow Arkan, whose boys are now doing such sterling work in Kosovo.
But of course none of these events involved the US or Britain, the two countries which can be guaranteed to promote an onset of that odd and tiresome Hibernian affliction, PIN, Pious Irish Neutralism, normally accompanied by a querulous and nitpicking casuistry - though it would require a more than ordinarily Jesuitical casuistry to convert Caoimghin O Caolain into being a guardian of the rule of law. He belongs to a party which is the political expression of a terrorist group that has been responsible for atrocities too numerous to mention, including the murder of Garda Jerry McCabe, none of which he has found it in his heart to condemn. But my, how I do enjoy morality lectures from him. Like smoking dope.
Turkey and Kurds
Not so long ago Vincent Browne was feverishly denouncing the US in this newspaper for not intervening in Rwanda/Burundi to end the genocide there, and he quoted all manner of international law, most pointedly the Genocide Convention of 1949, as justification. Now journalists should not be too predictable, otherwise there'd be no point in anyone actually reading what they said. So maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that he is now feverishly denouncing the US for doing in Kosovo what he was urging it to do in Africa. But still and all, it does make the old bean swim a bit.
Both men cited Turkey's treatment of Kurds as arguments for NATO not getting involved in Serbia. Sorry, but there is no genocide of Kurds in Turkey. There is a terrorist-secessionist war, in which some Kurds are allied with the Turkish government. I don't begin to understand the complexities of the situation there, but the "what about Turkey?" is an old stand-by in any argument about right and wrong among the good and earnest, visceral anti-Turkism being an assured instinct among such folk.
Vincent Browne said of Tony Blair: "With a tremor in his voice, he spoke of his wait for the return of the planes he had sent to drop hundreds of bombs, each of greater force than the bomb which ravaged Omagh last August, as his `longest hours.' " You know, just a quirk of mine, but I tend to think that it doesn't do a bit of harm every now and then to get an odd fact or two right when it comes to discussing such matters.
Seven Harriers
The British didn't set out with hundreds of bombs to rain on Serb targets. Seven Harriers set out with a maximum of two bombs each. Seven times two: 14, max. One bomb was dropped. When it missed its target because of adverse aiming conditions the mission was called off, and the other Harriers returned to base with their bombs.
And as for the Omagh reference, well, it's a nice crowd-pleaser, but it doesn't exactly tell us a great deal. For what precisely are combat aircraft meant to drop on military targets? Feather dusters? Or copies of the Genocide Convention, the one that apparently says intervention in Rwanda is spot-on, Bosco, but positively criminal in Serbia? Moreover, what, precisely, goes into the warheads of the 105mm mortars and artillery pieces of our own Army? Eggwhite?
An awful and irreversible thing happened last week, and the world is stuck with the consequences - one of which appears to be the contamination of our water supplies with LSD. I keep hearing the oddest things - but not, alas, a PIN drop.