I don't know whether Mickey McKevitt plays a round of golf and whether, if he does, he is a links man or a course man. But I think that a case can be made for him to be invited to join a celebrity golf round in Ballybunion in a week's time.
Neither do I know whether Mickey McKevitt was in any way involved in the Omagh massacre. But certainly I know of no evidence that he was, other than speculation by newspapers I have long come to suspect. I do know he has denied involvement, and he and his partner, apparently, have condemned the bombing.
If he had an involvement, his condemnation of it would not bring him much credit among the others involved in it, which is of itself some reason for taking at least some note of his condemnation. But one way or another, it appears Mickey McKevitt is not pleased about the Omagh bomb. He certainly does not wish to take credit for it, still less boast of any part in it.
And because of this and the unjustifiable vilification he has suffered from the media and the public (certainly unjustifiable in terms of any proof of his involvement in the Omagh atrocity) some recompense might be made to him.
A round of celebrity golf at Ballybunion might not be inappropriate. For one of the announced participants in this celebrity round of golf at Ballybunion has also been associated with a recent bombing atrocity, indeed, two bombing atrocities. This same prospective Ballybunion celebrity golfer has been involved in a series of previous bomb attacks, some of which have caused slaughter far greater than at Omagh.
These recent atrocities by this prospective Ballybunion celebrity golfer were also illegal, undertaken without any competent mandate, murderous in their foreseeable consequences and heedless of the carnage that they might cause. Unlike Mickey McKevitt, this prospective Ballybunion celebrity golfer has not dissociated himself from this bombing outrage, or expressed condemnation of it. Neither did his partner in life go on radio to Joe Duffy or to anyone else and express even a faltering dissociation from such violence.
Indeed, this prospective Ballybunion celebrity golfer has gone on television to boast of his involvement in that outrage, to take credit for it and to threaten to do it again.
I refer, of course, to President Bill Clinton and his part in the illegal, murderous missile attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan last Thursday. As James Hathaway, Professor of Intentional Law at the University of Michigan, wrote in a letter to The New York Times last Sunday: "No state has the right to exact retribution through an armed attack on another country. Even the Security Council of the United Nations can order an attack only in the interests of restoring peace and security, not to punish. Nor does any country have the right to launch missiles against a country it believes to harbour terrorists".
The self-defence justification advanced by President Clinton and his cabinet would countenance almost any act of aggression contemplated by a State in any circumstances. This was at best a punitive raid on suspects, at best because the motives for these acts of terrorism are probably far baser, ranging from a desire to appease US atavism to an attempt to distract public attention from personal embarrassments.
The fact that the bombs rained on a chemical factory, located in a residential area in Khartoum, apparently caused no loss of life is irrelevant to the morality of the action. As with the planting of car bombs in civilian areas, we know from experience that missiles directed at sites near residential areas kill people. Not always, but often enough to be a completely foreseeable consequence of such bombings.
In 1993 President Clinton launched cruise missile attacks on Baghdad. Over 50 civilians were murdered, including the internationally known artist and director of Iraq's National Centre for Arts, Layla al-Altar. George Bush did the same earlier in 1993, also causing tens of civilian casualties. Ronald Reagan did the same in Tripoli in the 1980s, again causing civilian casualties.
The claims that such cruise missiles are weapons of precision (and, by implication, killing is not a foreseeable consequence) is laughable. One of the missiles directed at the Osama bin Laden camp in Afghanistan not alone did not hit the right camp, it did not hit the right country (it fell on Pakistan).
But the bombings, especially those directed at Khartoum, were essentially a reckless enterprise, undertaken with only a vague idea of what was involved and what the consequences would be. The President's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, said at a press briefing at the White House last Thursday: "We have some reason to believe that [the chemical factory attacked] is not a plant that is in production in the evening hours, and as I say, it is an industrial area. One can never know for sure in a situation like this, but we took every precaution that we could."
As has since emerged, on the evening before the raid 50 civilians were working late in the factory, and the area is residential.
Only by the merest fluke were there not tens if not hundreds of fatalities. And as for the factory being the manufacturer of a key component of nerve gas, if that is so, why haven't the Americans told the world what precise evidence there is of this and why have they obstructed the Sudanese proposal to send in a UN investigation team immediately to establish whether this is so?
If the `Real IRA' were to offer the justifications and explanations for its series of outrages as the Americans have offered over these terrorist attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan, there would be widespread and justifiable revulsion. How is it then that when the remaining superpower state acts with similar moral and legal disregard for established conventions, there is no revulsion? Not even a whimper of disquiet?
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, David Andrews, recently grandstanded over Sudan, rushing into an EU Council of Ministers meeting with an urgent resolution and then rushing off to Sudan to express his and our concern for the starving millions there. How is it that he has had not a word to say about what the Americans have done to his country of the month?
We do not have to be so mealy-mouthed. When Ronald Reagan came here in the mid-1980s Garret FitzGerald did manage to express opposition to US policy in Central America, and this was at a time when Ireland was badly in need of US support on Northern Ireland. Why can nothing be said now about these atrocities in Sudan and Afghanistan? And if we remain silent over these, what moral authority do we have when we come to condemn our own murderers?
Ireland is indebted to President Clinton because of his part in the peace process. But we are indebted to our fellow human beings in other parts of the world as well. And we owe it to them to speak out.