Here I was, calling for the Government to upgrade the Defence Forces, and declaring what a splendid machine the EH101 helicopter, is and shouting for more equipment and a better career structure for the forces personnel - and wasting my time and everyone else's. The path ahead for them lies not with the Government but with private enterprise, and our splendid young narcotics dealers.
Look how the US government has responded to their South American equivalents. It has decided to deploy the Colombian Army as an armed proxy of its Drug Enforcement Agency to clear out Putamayo area of its coca industry. The US will provide the Colombian army with $2 million a day in aid, plus fleets of combat helicopters, in order to force thousands of guerrillas out from cover, so enabling spray-planes then to wipe out the coca crops.
Military advisers
That rings a bell somewhere. Ah yes, Vietnam. Arm local troops to do the job that US wants, throw in a few hundred military advisers, and dress the whole operation up in the language of a virtuous crusade. Hey presto. Problem solved.
"To those worried about slipping toward being involved, where better to be involved?" asked Republican Senate leader Trent Lott. "This is a question of standing up for our children, of standing up and fighting these narco-terrorists in our part of the world, in our neighbourhood, in our region."
Our neighbourhood, eh? Isn't Colombia a few thousand miles from Washington DC? Maybe Trent Lott thinks that he's talking about the District of Columbia, home of the US capital. Maybe he thinks he's voting for free-fire zones along the Potomac. You never know. A few year ago, a survey of US undergraduates showed that some 70 per cent of them thought India was next to Brazil.
There's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't pose the next threat to the health of US youth. To repress that threat, the Pentagon w ill happily arm our soldiers, and the Air Crops will get stealth fighters, and the Naval Service, in which the term frigate has for decades merely been a been a curse, will be up to its gunwales in warships. But only if we can convince the US Senate that Ireland is a threat to US Youth. The Department of Foreign Affairs should issue maps for US consumption which show that Ireland is just next to the torrid Colombian rain-forests of Putumayo, with our own torrid rain-forests, in Putalaois and Putaleitrim, where small farmers grow hallucinogenic turnips, and unemployed migrant parsnip-pickers prove to be a fertile recruiting ground for the narco-terrorist bandits who control the shamrock harvest.
In exchange for the US re-equipping our Defence Forces, plus a mere $2 million a day in ready cash, we'll crush illegal supplies of turnip and shamrock at source. And, no, we won't need any US advisers, thanks. Train up our bunch across the pond, by all means, but conditions in the jungles of Putawestmeath are far too abominable for those delicate-skinned softies of the Green Berets. . .
War in Longford
For if the US really wants to fight a war abroad because it has lost it at home, might I respectfully suggest that the Irish Midlands are a better venue than Colombia? A war in Longford won't shove up the price of drugs; one in Colombia probably will. Simple equation: high prices = high crime rates.
Something else. A war in Longford is simple and cheap; in Colombia, not. There is already a war in Colombia, between "right" and "left", as well as wars between state- and guerrilla-terrorists which I doubt anyone understands, least of all a pilot thudding over the rain-forests of Putamayo's 600 square miles of jungle. As the Americans discovered in Vietnam, you can hide a battalion of North Vietnamese infantry in a few hundred square yards of rainforest: in 600 square miles, you could conceal the entire Chinese Red Army.
But never mind Putamayo and its pathetic 600 square miles. Colombia is nearly half-a-million square miles in area - six times the size of South Vietnam. Only 35 per cent of the land is cultivated. Most of the rest is under forest. Over 180 languages are spoken among the 400 tribes who constitute the Colombian people. And the US thinks it's going to be easier to fight its drugs war there than at home? What drug are the members of the US Senate on? Sounds good.
Mafia cartels
Come what may, the US will lose wherever it fights its drugs war, at home in Buffalo or abroad in Bogota or even in downtown Birr. Unless states resort to criminal and totalitarian methods, they can barely dent the personal use of recreational drugs, and they will certainly not eliminate it. But in their war against drugs they can create grotesque distortions in the marketplace; the monopolies of Mafia cartels are effectively protected from competition by the state, which simultaneously criminalises those sections of the population who choose to take drugs.
By presenting this problem as one of a war for truth and justice - oh yes, and for our children's future too - the US is telling the big lie. The war is one of choice, not virtue. There is no virtue in policies which create profits for criminal cartels. If people want to take drugs, they should be allowed to, under the same consumer legislation which protects those who take other drugs such as paracetamol, aspirin, wine and brandy. And, metaphorically, which bronchially-generated gaseous exhalation am I wasting in saying this?
Ah yes: my breath.