"It would appear that the so-called superpowers don't have the will, or are too busy defending their own vested interests, to bother [to take the first step towards making the UN the force it was intended to be]," wrote John O'Shea of GOAL in this newspaper last Saturday. "I can see no reason why a representative of the Irish people. . .cannot be the initiator of such a move."
Does he not? Really? He sees no reason why we should not take the lead in establishing a world peace force? So, will our splendid political and administrative classes set up blood transfusion clinics in Africa? Will they give lessons on how to tell a mother, oops, you know your two boys, the ones who haven't been well? Silly us. We gave them contaminated blood five years ago and we forgot to tell you and now they're dying. Next, please.
Political probity
And will we give Africans seminars in political probity, led, say, by Charles Haughey and Ray Burke? Will county councillors show local politicians in Nairobi how to subvert and destroy their own planning regulations? Will officials from the meat-packing industry give a few useful tips on how to sell rotting wildebeest meat to Russia? Will Dublin Corporation teach pluralism, using as an example the capital city's splendid and inspiring respect for the Orange tradition?
Maybe Dublin Bus and others who have so usefully spent the past decade or so studying the capital's traffic problems will teach their opposite numbers in Accra and Lagos and fun-filled Freetown how to run a public transport system. And maybe our lawyers will school Foday Sankoh's lads on how to escape the legal consequences of their terrorism by an artful deployment of an uncrossed t or an undotted i and other such footling errors in court documents.
Not everyone can do what they do best. Certain NGOs, such as Sinn Fein's armed wing, will have to run courses on breastfeeding, childcare and crocheting for the elderly, since its particular area of expertise is already in over-supply in Africa. Indeed, by the standards of many African countries, the IRA at its worst is merely the Legion of Mary at prayer.
Unfortunately, the truth is as true today as it was when it was written in 1899. Interference in other people's countries doesn't work. It dislocates internal relationships and liberates rulers from responsibility: ?????????????????ein's armed wing, not run night courses on how to maim children, or line up weeping men and butcher them, yet still manage to present yourselves as oppressed victims and go on to win election victories? And maybe another NGO, such as the Irish Countrywoman's Association or the Legion of Mary, could lead the force which is going to come to the aid of Africa.
Because whoever will lead this force spreading civilisation across the deserts, grasslands and the rain-forests of Africa, and imposing the rule of law on limb-hacking cannibals, it will hardly, after decades of political indifference and ruinous false economising, be the most incorruptible, the most loyal and the most neglected State institution in the country: the Army of the Irish Republic.
Take up the white man's burden -/ The savage wars of peace -/ Fill full the mouth of Famine/ And bid the sickness cease;/ And when your goal is nearest/ The end for others sought,/ Watch Sloth and heathen Folly/ Bring all your hopes to nought.
Sloth and folly
John O'Shea's GOAL cannot fill full the mouth of famine or bid the sickness cease in Sierra Leone because sloth and heathen folly have once again reduced that country to starvation and casual murder. Cross the 3,000 miles of Africa to Ethiopia and Eritrea which, I seem to remember, we rescued from self-induced famine 15 years ago. Guess what? They're at it again; and once again we're being asked to rescue those countries from their latest exercise in unnecessary, artificially created starvation even as their leaders, whose war-granaries are glutted with grain, embark upon yet another insane and incomprehensible war.
If we help them now, if we are blackmailed into feeding the starving children of these countries by sending more food into a war economy in which food is as much a weapon as guns, are we not prolonging conflict? Are we not ensuring that war becomes habitual and even addictive if we repeatedly protect local political and military elites from its full consequences? Is not the assurance that we will always be there with the bread basket in time of war an actual inducement for these elites to go to war again? And those young men being sent to needless, belt-fed slaughter in battle today - were they not the very infants we saved from death by famine 15 years ago?
Expeditionary force
Still, maybe John O'Shea has a point. Maybe Ireland should have raised a an expeditionary force at the time of the last great Ethiopian famine, when so many of the architects of our own woes were at the height of their powers, and then sent that force to the worst and most inhospitable part of that part of the world, where sleeping sickness, malaria, dengue, AIDS and elephantiasis are rife, and death was certain.
The force commander would, unquestionably of course, have been Charles J. Haughey VC (Venal & Corrupt). Force Chaplain would have been Father Brendan Smyth, OP (Operational Pederast), though we could also have spared him many, many assistants. Quartermaster would have been one of our better-known beef tycoons. Force Paymaster would have been Frank Dunlop, PWSFM (Pssst, Want Some Feeelthy Money?). Chief Flying Officer would have been Ben Dunne, WSIA (Who Started It All). And of course, Ray Burke would have been Girth Officer, to show starving Africans what dimensional possibilities await the imaginative politician.
Yes indeed, such lessons we can teach the people of Africa.