Will Protesters Tell the Truth in US?

Belfast Telegraph
Will Protesters Tell the Truth in US?
By Eric Waugh
News from 1st-16th Feb 03

DISSENTING from American foreign policy on a single, important issue is one thing. Rabid, open-ended anti-Americanism is another. But this last is what we were treated to in one or two of the splenetic speeches at last weekend's big street demonstration in Belfast.

Whether or not to go to war on Saddam was used to fan the embers of a much older quarrel indeed; and that is the one initiated by a section of the Irish on this side of the Atlantic against the superpower on the other.

In Ireland, north and south, this represents an anomaly of giant proportions. More than a quarter of US investment in the EU is in the territorially tiny Republic. The US is its biggest source of investment, spread over more than 500 companies, generating half of its exports and keeping tens of thousands of the Republic's citizens in the style to which recently they have become accustomed. As for us, the UK takes the lion's share of US European investment.

In another three weeks there will be the annual feast of manufactured bonhomie in Washington, attended by the usual (embarrassingly swollen) delegation from these parts.

Will its members convey a message which includes the vulgar abuse so loudly applauded by their massed citizenry in front of the City Hall on Saturday? Or will they excuse themselves, stressing that "Of course we were not there". If so, they had better make their dissociation public before they go, if they wish to hold on to any credibility.

When the first American troops crossed the Atlantic in the Second World War, they were sent here. Churchill's advisers feared hostility among the straitened populace in England if such large numbers of well-paid and well-found GIs were to arrive there at once.

Yet when the first detachments disembarked in Belfast in January, 1942, and marched off to their billets, they were pelted with rocks by republican youths.

These dissidents had been fed tales by their elders that the troops had come to invade neutral Eire, which of course they would have done in the event of a German landing.

But all knew that, by 1942, that was improbable. In reality, the Americans were here to prepare for the invasion of Europe. Within days, though, a sentry on lone vigil by night outside a US Army camp in Co Down was stabbed in the back by an assailant. He was never caught. Three months later, a bus driver, a local Orangeman who allegedly had failed to give way, was shot dead at Ballykelly, Co. Derry, by the trigger-happy American sergeant in a scout car, warned about the IRA and escorting a convoy of top brass which included General George Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff, not to mention President Roosevelt's two top aides, Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman.

Even so, the Yanks, as they were universally known, soon found that, although they might find a welcome among many nationalists, unionist areas were safer.

Two generations later, this intricate skein of history contains clues to current passions.

Tales of trigger-happy Yanks in Co Derry are readily transmuted into supposedly trigger-happy Yanks camped in Kuwait.

American fury at the French ("They're always there when they need us") is energised by the recent screenings in the US of Band of Brothers and, before that, of the agonising first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. Each is a tour de force on the Normandy campaign of 1944. Spielberg's "Ryan" is sometimes tasteless history; but both, excusably, sublimate the bearers of Yankee guns into something verging on nobility. Bush's intentions in the Gulf may alarm us. The middle-aged and older shudder at the memory of Vietnam. The prospect of war alarms me. I dread its effects. I wish I knew the answer to the President's dilemma.

But, unless we have one, we should pause before allowing a wise caution to be corrupted into an unreasoning anti-Americanism.

Will Protesters Tell the Truth in US?

Belfast Telegraph
Will Protesters Tell the Truth in US?
By Eric Waugh
News from 1st-16th Feb 03

DISSENTING from American foreign policy on a single, important issue is one thing. Rabid, open-ended anti-Americanism is another. But this last is what we were treated to in one or two of the splenetic speeches at last weekend's big street demonstration in Belfast.

Whether or not to go to war on Saddam was used to fan the embers of a much older quarrel indeed; and that is the one initiated by a section of the Irish on this side of the Atlantic against the superpower on the other.

In Ireland, north and south, this represents an anomaly of giant proportions. More than a quarter of US investment in the EU is in the territorially tiny Republic. The US is its biggest source of investment, spread over more than 500 companies, generating half of its exports and keeping tens of thousands of the Republic's citizens in the style to which recently they have become accustomed. As for us, the UK takes the lion's share of US European investment.

In another three weeks there will be the annual feast of manufactured bonhomie in Washington, attended by the usual (embarrassingly swollen) delegation from these parts.

Will its members convey a message which includes the vulgar abuse so loudly applauded by their massed citizenry in front of the City Hall on Saturday? Or will they excuse themselves, stressing that "Of course we were not there". If so, they had better make their dissociation public before they go, if they wish to hold on to any credibility.

When the first American troops crossed the Atlantic in the Second World War, they were sent here. Churchill's advisers feared hostility among the straitened populace in England if such large numbers of well-paid and well-found GIs were to arrive there at once.

Yet when the first detachments disembarked in Belfast in January, 1942, and marched off to their billets, they were pelted with rocks by republican youths.

These dissidents had been fed tales by their elders that the troops had come to invade neutral Eire, which of course they would have done in the event of a German landing.

But all knew that, by 1942, that was improbable. In reality, the Americans were here to prepare for the invasion of Europe. Within days, though, a sentry on lone vigil by night outside a US Army camp in Co Down was stabbed in the back by an assailant. He was never caught. Three months later, a bus driver, a local Orangeman who allegedly had failed to give way, was shot dead at Ballykelly, Co. Derry, by the trigger-happy American sergeant in a scout car, warned about the IRA and escorting a convoy of top brass which included General George Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff, not to mention President Roosevelt's two top aides, Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman.

Even so, the Yanks, as they were universally known, soon found that, although they might find a welcome among many nationalists, unionist areas were safer.

Two generations later, this intricate skein of history contains clues to current passions.

Tales of trigger-happy Yanks in Co Derry are readily transmuted into supposedly trigger-happy Yanks camped in Kuwait.

American fury at the French ("They're always there when they need us") is energised by the recent screenings in the US of Band of Brothers and, before that, of the agonising first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. Each is a tour de force on the Normandy campaign of 1944. Spielberg's "Ryan" is sometimes tasteless history; but both, excusably, sublimate the bearers of Yankee guns into something verging on nobility. Bush's intentions in the Gulf may alarm us. The middle-aged and older shudder at the memory of Vietnam. The prospect of war alarms me. I dread its effects. I wish I knew the answer to the President's dilemma.

But, unless we have one, we should pause before allowing a wise caution to be corrupted into an unreasoning anti-Americanism.

Will Protesters Tell the Truth in US?

Belfast Telegraph
Will Protesters Tell the Truth in US?
By Eric Waugh
News from 1st-16th Feb 03

DISSENTING from American foreign policy on a single, important issue is one thing. Rabid, open-ended anti-Americanism is another. But this last is what we were treated to in one or two of the splenetic speeches at last weekend's big street demonstration in Belfast.

Whether or not to go to war on Saddam was used to fan the embers of a much older quarrel indeed; and that is the one initiated by a section of the Irish on this side of the Atlantic against the superpower on the other.

In Ireland, north and south, this represents an anomaly of giant proportions. More than a quarter of US investment in the EU is in the territorially tiny Republic. The US is its biggest source of investment, spread over more than 500 companies, generating half of its exports and keeping tens of thousands of the Republic's citizens in the style to which recently they have become accustomed. As for us, the UK takes the lion's share of US European investment.

In another three weeks there will be the annual feast of manufactured bonhomie in Washington, attended by the usual (embarrassingly swollen) delegation from these parts.

Will its members convey a message which includes the vulgar abuse so loudly applauded by their massed citizenry in front of the City Hall on Saturday? Or will they excuse themselves, stressing that "Of course we were not there". If so, they had better make their dissociation public before they go, if they wish to hold on to any credibility.

When the first American troops crossed the Atlantic in the Second World War, they were sent here. Churchill's advisers feared hostility among the straitened populace in England if such large numbers of well-paid and well-found GIs were to arrive there at once.

Yet when the first detachments disembarked in Belfast in January, 1942, and marched off to their billets, they were pelted with rocks by republican youths.

These dissidents had been fed tales by their elders that the troops had come to invade neutral Eire, which of course they would have done in the event of a German landing.

But all knew that, by 1942, that was improbable. In reality, the Americans were here to prepare for the invasion of Europe. Within days, though, a sentry on lone vigil by night outside a US Army camp in Co Down was stabbed in the back by an assailant. He was never caught. Three months later, a bus driver, a local Orangeman who allegedly had failed to give way, was shot dead at Ballykelly, Co. Derry, by the trigger-happy American sergeant in a scout car, warned about the IRA and escorting a convoy of top brass which included General George Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff, not to mention President Roosevelt's two top aides, Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman.

Even so, the Yanks, as they were universally known, soon found that, although they might find a welcome among many nationalists, unionist areas were safer.

Two generations later, this intricate skein of history contains clues to current passions.

Tales of trigger-happy Yanks in Co Derry are readily transmuted into supposedly trigger-happy Yanks camped in Kuwait.

American fury at the French ("They're always there when they need us") is energised by the recent screenings in the US of Band of Brothers and, before that, of the agonising first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. Each is a tour de force on the Normandy campaign of 1944. Spielberg's "Ryan" is sometimes tasteless history; but both, excusably, sublimate the bearers of Yankee guns into something verging on nobility. Bush's intentions in the Gulf may alarm us. The middle-aged and older shudder at the memory of Vietnam. The prospect of war alarms me. I dread its effects. I wish I knew the answer to the President's dilemma.

But, unless we have one, we should pause before allowing a wise caution to be corrupted into an unreasoning anti-Americanism.