Connect Eddie HoltThere are governments and there are countries. Does the widespread rejection of Irish Government policies in the recent elections mean that people who voted against Fianna Fáil or the Progressive Democrats are anti-Irish? Has anybody suggested such nonsense? Of course not. The principle of democracy is, after all, bigger than the governments it chooses.
Nonetheless, expect to hear obfuscating and propagandist guff about anti-American feeling in Ireland this weekend. No doubt, a tiny minority of Irish people do not like the US and it is not thoroughly possible to separate governments from citizens. Rulers are citizens too but this weekend's protests will be primarily against the government of George Bush, not against the US.
Although they are linked, they are not synonymous. Indeed, Bush is arguably the most anti-American man in the Western world and it's not merely cheap or putatively smartass to say so. The president of the US and his cabal have done more to foster worldwide anti-US feeling (government and inevitably, through seepage, country) than any group of Western protesters.
Certainly, his office deserves respect. It represents about 280 million people. But in telling grievous lies to their fellow citizens, ordering and condoning the mistreatment and torture of prisoners and treating international institutions with contempt, Bush and his cronies have been more anti-American than almost any of their domestic or international critics.
The irony, of course, is that his government has attempted to appropriate American patriotism. Almost three years on from his notorious "you're either with us or with the terrorists" lie, George Bush has not recanted. To criticise or even condemn him and his cronies is not to place yourself in the same camp as the lunatic Islamic zealot Osama Bin Laden. It just isn't.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11th, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, most Europeans (Irish included) probably underestimated the severity of the wound to the American psyche. It was, naturally, profound and was always going to provoke a backlash. Any country would seek revenge for such mass murder and the world's most powerful one is no different.
People, after all, are people whether they live in New York, Washington, Afghanistan or Iraq. Almost 3,000 innocents were killed in the US when terrorists crashed planes into huge buildings. A multiple of that figure - perhaps eight times (who knows?) that number of innocents - have been killed by Bush's terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On the day after St Patrick's Day last year, Barbara Bush, wife of George Bush Senior and mother of George Dubya, appeared on US television's Good Morning America show. What she had to say is, in its own way, as chilling as any of her son's pronouncements. It also reveals much about the way his thinking must have been formed. Barbara Bush said the following: "But why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that and watch him suffer?" That is precisely what Barbara Bush said on a hugely popular American TV programme.
It might well, Mrs Bush, be relevant to the mothers of Afghan, Iraqi, American, British, Italian, South Korean sons (or daughters) killed as a consequence of your son's orders. Whether such mothers have beautiful minds or not, be assured that most of them considered their children beautiful and that their suffering continues because their lives have been permanently scarred.
They have been scarred like those who lost relatives in New York and Washington - no more, no less. That is the ugly truth, Mrs Bush, whether or not your "beautiful mind" acknowledges it. But the gross notion - and it is exceptionally gross - that the deaths of other mothers' innocent children are less than the possible pricks they might cause to the conscience of Mrs Bush's son is vile.
She said her stuff less than two days before her son announced that the US was going to attack Iraq. She needn't have worried for him anyway. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has footage of George Dubya, not suffering but grinning minutes before he announces that the country he leads is going to attack Iraq. Shock and awe, indeed.
The great power in any age - like the boss of any outfit - will inevitably attract criticism. By definition, the greater the power, the greater its range of influence and the more people will be potentially hostile. That's the way history unfolds. It's part of the price of power and in Ireland (well, the Republic, at any rate) few are sad that the US has replaced Britain as the global superpower.
Yet, it's crucial to distinguish between the US and its government. Expect to hear charges of "anti-Americanism" this weekend as though people who condemn George Bush are simultaneously condemning his country. It would be good too to remind those who insist on making Bush and the US synonymous that he won fewer votes than Al Gore. Democracy? Oh please . . .