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“Shoot on Sight”, “Shoot To Kill”.

22/08/08

People in Ireland have become accustomed to some of the most violent leaders in the world coming to the country to denounce the use of violence.

From Tony Blair to Gordon Brown, from Bill Clinton to George W Bush, powerful politicians with a penchant for militarism have used the ‘Irish Peace Process’ to show off their lesser-spotted pacifist instincts.

Skipping in and out of Belfast at the height of media hype, these modern day empire builders took their opportunities to condemn “violence for political ends,” before making a quick return to their respective HQs to consider the political efficacy of bombing certain countries “back to the stone age”.

It has become a cliché that the likes of Blair and Bush have seen “Northern Ireland” as their chance for a success story, in a career résumé blotted with the blood of countless dead civilians.

For those eager enough to see through the spin and propaganda, their ability to do so has been a depressing trademark of the last 15 years of Irish political life.

The rehabilitation of the Democratic Unionist Party into a group of men and women who had the courage “to face down terrorism” and are, as a result, now getting their just reward is a spectacle just as depressing.

It is a sign of wilful naivety on the part of the other participants in Britain’s peace (read normalisation) process that they came to believe in the all pervasiveness of its rhetoric.

Two events in the last week show the duplicity of its drivers.

Just days after it was announced that British troops returning from Afghanistan were to be paraded through the town of Ballymena, the British army killed three civilians in a rocket attack in the occupied Asian country.

The unarmed victims were killed, while two children were seriously injured, when the British army attacked a building in Helmand province on Saturday (August 16).

In what could be mistaken for a surprisingly frank admission, a spokesperson for the British soldiers who carried out the massacre said that, “The enemies of Afghanistan have yet again shown a complete disregard for the lives of the innocent who they claim to fight for.”

Unfortunately, the mouthpiece for NATO’s mercenaries was referring to the Afghan fighters that were the alleged target of the rocket attack, and not the real enemies of Afghanistan – the occupying forces.

Despite the British scoring a direct hit on their target, there were no reports of any armed Afghan casualties in the incident.

Meanwhile, a DUP representative for the north Antrim town that Britain’s gunmen are set to march through has called for republicans to be shot on sight in response to a failed rocket attack in Fermanagh on Saturday that killed no one.

Ian Paisley Jr, who is an influencial member of the RUC-PSNI’s Six County Policing Board, said: “If dissidents are shot on sight, the community will accept that it is a necessary use of lethal force to prevent dissident republicanism from growing".

The logic of British imperialism and its cheerleaders, whether in Ireland or elsewhere, is clearly unchanged.

They will use every means at their disposal regardless of ethics or morality to cement their misrule, including, when necessary, the resort to brutal and ruthless violence.

Writing about recent US moves to place military material in Poland, the English political commentator George Monbiot noted, “If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems… we are looking in the wrong place.”

Those concerned with Britain’s continued involvement in Irish affairs would do well to reflect on Monbiot’s point and remember that we can view their presence in no other context than that of a military and political occupation.

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