Your Irishman's Diary today comes from the underground bunker, deep beneath the White House, where advice to the US from journalists and politicians around around the world is processed. Teams of Opinion Catchers sift through the vast babble emanating from everywhere to see if there is the faintest possibility that there is a molecule of sense in it.
The room is specially equipped to enable staffers (as we say in Washington) to cope with the occupational hazards of their trade. There is the Vomitorium, much used of late, to enable Opinion Catchers to relieve themselves after a particularly noxious piece of sanctimony has got stuck just south of their tonsils and refuses to move. There is the china shop, where OCs can go and smash a few hundred plates in rage at the surfeit of stupidity masquerading as statesmanship or journalism. There is the insulin room, where staffers receive emergency treatment for toxic levels of glucose induced by reading too much pious prattle. And there is the Whatabout Room, where angels' wings waft cooling breezes over the fevered brows of members of staff who have had to read of "discoveries" by gleeful foreigners of yet more inconsistencies in US foreign policy.
Quivering voice
"The question I would like to ask is this," intoned an Opinion Catcher with a quivering voice as he read aloud from the Sydney Liberal Bilge. "What injustice made these people hate America as much as they do, and how else could the voiceless ones otherwise be heard?" The OC rose, stumbled, steadied himself, and then tottered into the Vomitorium, from where retching noises indicated that some abdominal clearance was under way.
An OC who had just returned from the china shop, where he had destroyed 235 plates, fifty saucers and a gravy tureen, was reading with trembling hands the opinions of a letter writer to a London newspaper. "What I don't understand is why Osama bin Laden is not brought before the international criminal court in the Hague, where, if he is found guilty, he could be sent to a long term in jail, where he could repent of his sins at his leisure, and of course, receive visits from a clergyman of his choosing. This would send out a powerful message around the world, and would act as a deterrent to other would-be terrorists."
In the Whatabout room, an Opinion Catcher was beating his head against the cushioned walls as archangels' wings sent cool zephyrs vainly against his fevered temples. He took a few newspaper clippings out of his pocket, scanned them, and threw them in the air. "What about," he snarled in a rhetorical interrogation, "Tibet, Srebenice, East Timor, Chechnya, Kashmir, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, delete as necessary. All human life is equally sacred. Is it not typical of US hypocrisy to become exercised about its losses in one attack, when so many people are dying all over the world, blah, blah, blah? Excuse me," he mumbled, his hands reaching for his mouth, and he fled the Whatabout Room for the Vomitorium.
Chickening out
In silence, another Opinion Catcher in the Operations Room read a dispatch from Ireland reporting the comments of the prime minister there. He re-read it, and passed it to a colleague. "What do you think of that?" His companion read it, plucked a few hairs from his head, and murmured: "My. Chickening out already. And it hasn't even started yet."
For what the Opinion Catchers had read was the account of how the Taoiseach had said, within five days of the worst terrorist atrocity in world history, that he thought it was unlikely there would be any Irish military involvement in the war against terrorism, and he hoped that not many countries would be drawn into it.
Over coffee, the Opinion Catchers tried to work out how the prime minister of a country which had three separate organisations called IRA, one called the INLA, and one called the IPLO, all of them armed, all of them with seasoned killers at their command, would have no military involvement in a war against terrorism. Just across the international border of that state, there were numerous other terrorist organisations - the UVF, the UDA, the Red Hand Defenders, the Red Hand Commandos. Yet apparently the forces of the Republic would have no hand in a campaign against terrorism.
Captured in Colombia
Baffled, they tried to work out how a leader who professed friendship for the US could in the same breath seem to declare there was no way that he intended to express it. They wondered about the three IRA men captured in Colombia after consorting for weeks with the US's deadliest regional foes, and of whom the US special adviser Richard Haass said: "They were not there for their vacations, they were not there for an exchange of views on negotiation techniques in the peace process, but for discussion with FARC on matters that come under the rubric of terrorism."
They couldn't understand how the elected leader of a democracy hoped that not many countries would be involved in a war against terrorism, when terrorism - and not just the Islamic variety - was a worldwide phenomenon afflicting scores of countries, especially his.
They didn't understand how Ireland, which has benefited so much from the US connection, and which has suffered so much from terrorism, couldn't recognise that rare coincidence of self-interest and political morality when it so happily occurs. They couldn't understand any of this.
And by God they're not the only ones.