A PRESIDENT DRIVEN BY UNIMPEACHABLE MOTIVES
A president driven by unimpeachable motives
James Kelly
ON SATURDAY
We live in extraordinary times with events unfolding with breathtaking rapidity. A few years ago voices were raised here and in Britain about the impertinence of Washington daring to involve itself in the UK's "internal affairs" - in other words the insoluble problem of Northern Ireland. Now all that is changed.
History is being made before our very eyes. President Clinton, who played a major role in the drama of the Good Friday agreement, has been here with an entourage of US congressmen, senators and journalists to underpin that agreement and the remarkable endorsement of its terms by a massive vote of the people of Ireland, north and south.
The cynics of Whitehall who pooh-poohed as a passing phase Clinton's involvement in the attempt to end the nightmare of 30 years of "war", allegedly to enlist the Irish-American vote, have been proved wrong.
The commitment of the White House and the most powerful democracy in the world to see this chapter in Irish history through to a successful conclusion is manifest and accepted as such by both the governments in Dublin and London. Neither government could have got this far without the powerful input of the White House, ex-Senator George Mitchell and the whole dramatis personae of the State Department working behind the scenes. Ignoring the sneers and jeers about the Yanks -endemic at Westminster - the radical Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, has thrown in his lot with Clinton to mastermind the peace process. Such a contrast to Harold Wilson's and Merlyn Rees's abandonment of responsibility in the face of the loyalist revolt misnamed a "strike".
So is this "peace in our time" at last, violence "over and done with", a glint of hope and light after the gloom and near despair of the Day of Infamy on a Saturday afternoon in the quiet town of Omagh? We have been given new hope by this unprecedented presidential flight from a global economic crisis summit in Moscow to poor old unhappy Belfast with its rusting barbed wire, armed troops, and the ancient inscription on the Whiterock wall quoted by the president: "Is there life before death?" In bankrupt Russia Clinton worried about a drift back to communism in a country financially broke but stiff with nuclear weapons. The mealy-mouthed moguls of finance in the west, saved a generation ago by the Marshall plan, are leaving the problems to the US to solve - "over to you Uncle Sam". In contrast to such a global responsibility dumped on Washington's laps, are we aware how lucky we are for this astounding concentration on our pitiful self-imposed shambles by the powerhouse of democracy across the Atlantic?
Weeks before the president's visit, FBI men, responsible for his safety in a dangerous world, were here checking over his itinerary. The terrorist outrages in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, nearer home in Ballymoney (sequel to Drumcree) and the massacre of the innocents in Omagh by the RIRA concentrated the federal bureau men's minds. They even inspected the sewers. For sewer rats? How else can we describe the barbarians and cowards who ran away leaving a massive car bomb to turn a crowded shopping street in the town of Omagh into a living hell of 28 shattered bodies and 200 maimed and disfigured strewn around in a charnel house of chaos? The world was shocked by the pictures of that hellish scene filmed, by some act of providence, by an amateur film-maker on the scene as the dust settled on the dazed victims running shocked and blood-stained from the scene of the blast. Those rare action pictures circled the globe on television together with reports of the appalling scenes in the hospitals as grief stricken relatives sought news of missing children, grannies, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. They brought home to us as never before -except the Enniskillen Armistice Day horror - the full infamy of the ghouls who plan or execute such outrages.
At home on the following Sunday the shame and disgust of, the people of Ireland were palpable as the enormity of the crime struck home. There was an awakening by people everywhere, a sickening feeling that something evil had emerged to smash the peace so urgently demanded in one of the biggest mandates in Irish history.
The revulsion came like a mighty wave. Suddenly the cast of the green and orange dissidents about 1912 and 1916 seemed besmirched. Was it people-power and fear of the consequences that galvanised so many of the suspect dissident groups to rush hurriedly into print? They changed their tunes and ate their words - the double-talk and incitement to fools by self-appointed generalissimos and expert bombmakers. Is this the finale of the grotesque campaign which began at Markethill and Banbridge and ended in disaster at Omagh, which reduced towns and villages to rubble and to hell with the unfortunate civilians who get in the way? Is this the end of the cosy game of code words phoned from a safe distance imposing on the recipients the responsibility for helping in their dirty work?
President Clinton and his wife did well to visit Omagh and take part with Tony Blair and wife in those amazing scenes of friendship and thanks for backing the peace process and ensuring that there shall never be another loathsome outrage of that description against humanity.
Earlier he spoke to the 108 members of the new assembly in words of grave import and warned them not to let this chance for peace slip away for it would not come again.
Like skeletons at the feast, the DUP dissidents were there, minus Boss Paisley and Robinson absent on "important business" at Westminster, leaving the rump to cheekily accuse President Clinton of "double standards" about terrorists. They must take him for a fool. He is well informed about the history of these political mountebanks.
James Kelly
ON SATURDAY
We live in extraordinary times with events unfolding with breathtaking rapidity. A few years ago voices were raised here and in Britain about the impertinence of Washington daring to involve itself in the UK's "internal affairs" - in other words the insoluble problem of Northern Ireland. Now all that is changed.
History is being made before our very eyes. President Clinton, who played a major role in the drama of the Good Friday agreement, has been here with an entourage of US congressmen, senators and journalists to underpin that agreement and the remarkable endorsement of its terms by a massive vote of the people of Ireland, north and south.
The cynics of Whitehall who pooh-poohed as a passing phase Clinton's involvement in the attempt to end the nightmare of 30 years of "war", allegedly to enlist the Irish-American vote, have been proved wrong.
The commitment of the White House and the most powerful democracy in the world to see this chapter in Irish history through to a successful conclusion is manifest and accepted as such by both the governments in Dublin and London. Neither government could have got this far without the powerful input of the White House, ex-Senator George Mitchell and the whole dramatis personae of the State Department working behind the scenes. Ignoring the sneers and jeers about the Yanks -endemic at Westminster - the radical Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, has thrown in his lot with Clinton to mastermind the peace process. Such a contrast to Harold Wilson's and Merlyn Rees's abandonment of responsibility in the face of the loyalist revolt misnamed a "strike".
So is this "peace in our time" at last, violence "over and done with", a glint of hope and light after the gloom and near despair of the Day of Infamy on a Saturday afternoon in the quiet town of Omagh? We have been given new hope by this unprecedented presidential flight from a global economic crisis summit in Moscow to poor old unhappy Belfast with its rusting barbed wire, armed troops, and the ancient inscription on the Whiterock wall quoted by the president: "Is there life before death?" In bankrupt Russia Clinton worried about a drift back to communism in a country financially broke but stiff with nuclear weapons. The mealy-mouthed moguls of finance in the west, saved a generation ago by the Marshall plan, are leaving the problems to the US to solve - "over to you Uncle Sam". In contrast to such a global responsibility dumped on Washington's laps, are we aware how lucky we are for this astounding concentration on our pitiful self-imposed shambles by the powerhouse of democracy across the Atlantic?
Weeks before the president's visit, FBI men, responsible for his safety in a dangerous world, were here checking over his itinerary. The terrorist outrages in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, nearer home in Ballymoney (sequel to Drumcree) and the massacre of the innocents in Omagh by the RIRA concentrated the federal bureau men's minds. They even inspected the sewers. For sewer rats? How else can we describe the barbarians and cowards who ran away leaving a massive car bomb to turn a crowded shopping street in the town of Omagh into a living hell of 28 shattered bodies and 200 maimed and disfigured strewn around in a charnel house of chaos? The world was shocked by the pictures of that hellish scene filmed, by some act of providence, by an amateur film-maker on the scene as the dust settled on the dazed victims running shocked and blood-stained from the scene of the blast. Those rare action pictures circled the globe on television together with reports of the appalling scenes in the hospitals as grief stricken relatives sought news of missing children, grannies, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. They brought home to us as never before -except the Enniskillen Armistice Day horror - the full infamy of the ghouls who plan or execute such outrages.
At home on the following Sunday the shame and disgust of, the people of Ireland were palpable as the enormity of the crime struck home. There was an awakening by people everywhere, a sickening feeling that something evil had emerged to smash the peace so urgently demanded in one of the biggest mandates in Irish history.
The revulsion came like a mighty wave. Suddenly the cast of the green and orange dissidents about 1912 and 1916 seemed besmirched. Was it people-power and fear of the consequences that galvanised so many of the suspect dissident groups to rush hurriedly into print? They changed their tunes and ate their words - the double-talk and incitement to fools by self-appointed generalissimos and expert bombmakers. Is this the finale of the grotesque campaign which began at Markethill and Banbridge and ended in disaster at Omagh, which reduced towns and villages to rubble and to hell with the unfortunate civilians who get in the way? Is this the end of the cosy game of code words phoned from a safe distance imposing on the recipients the responsibility for helping in their dirty work?
President Clinton and his wife did well to visit Omagh and take part with Tony Blair and wife in those amazing scenes of friendship and thanks for backing the peace process and ensuring that there shall never be another loathsome outrage of that description against humanity.
Earlier he spoke to the 108 members of the new assembly in words of grave import and warned them not to let this chance for peace slip away for it would not come again.
Like skeletons at the feast, the DUP dissidents were there, minus Boss Paisley and Robinson absent on "important business" at Westminster, leaving the rump to cheekily accuse President Clinton of "double standards" about terrorists. They must take him for a fool. He is well informed about the history of these political mountebanks.
Further Information
Publisher: THE IRISH NEWS
Ref: IN/0368
Published Date: 05-Sep-98
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