Still sick, but not as much as humanity

[muckefuck]

If you've read Joyce's Portrait, then you might recall that the death of Parnell is featured significantly in Chapter One. I'm sure his accomplishments are vague even to many Irishmen, so you can well imagine how dim they are to an American who's never had a history course centred on the British Isles in his life. This prompted some remedial reading which I continued on Wikipedia today.

As you might expect, it's pretty heavy going, particularly when you get to the more recent events, like the Troubles. (Why couldn't I have gone my whole life without ever having to learn of the Shankill Butchers?) I have vivid memories of such events as the Irish Hunger Strike and the Enniskillen bombing (a.k.a. the Remembrance Day Massacre) so it's hard to achieve something like objective distance. Still, one thing the comes through in reviewing the developments (particularly in light of some of the recently declassified reports and documents) is how, in retrospect, it's almost like there was someone in the British administration wondering, Hmm, how can we best radicalise the populace in order to build support for the Provos? when they conceived their policies.

What's worse is how many of these are appalling familiar. Lessee, interment for ordinary civilians coupled with prison torture? Check. Arming and colluding with sectarian militias? Also check. The British Army were also seen as saviours when they first arrived in the North, but within a couple years they were being stoned in the streets. It makes one think long and hard about what our legacy will be in Iraq. (As does this sombre post from magdalene1.)

Comments

[bwillsouth.livejournal.com]

By the way, what media have you been using to learn Irish?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Answered above in a new post.

[f8n-begorra.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of a quote from that marvelous Irishman, Edmund Burke: “Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”

The manual of what not to do when occupying another country was written in Ireland in the '70s. But within days of the Iraqi occupation, the same traumatic mistakes were repeated with the same outcomes.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Reading further back, it looks to me like the manual was rewritten there several times with 1972 being only one of the more recent revisions. How many Bloody Sundays do you need to teach you how not to handle crowd control?

[f8n-begorra.livejournal.com]

I remember Bloody Sunday too well. I lost my innocence that day. I remember my father as the news reports came in, as angered as I have ever seen him. On the Irish network, RTE there were reports of 17 murdered and many more injured at the peace march. On BBC, we heard that 2 "terrorists" were shot after firing at British forces. Since that day, I have been skeptical of BBC news and all major media outlets. I also began to understand the power of words.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It takes me aback than an event which happened over thirty years ago in a place I've never been still has the power to upset me so much.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that time and distance can only dull things so much. I found it really hard to read accounts of the Mongol conquests... and yet the consensus opinion is that nobody would get upset about them today: for me, the perfect analytical distance maintained by western historians makes them all the more horrific.

I agree with you about the history of Britain's occupation in Ireland - every single move seems calculated to cause more harm - but it's basically the colonial playbook. Has anyone ever got it right, or are the 'successful cases' just ones where the voices of the victims have been completely obliterated?

[febrile.livejournal.com]

It still strikes me as odd that the freshmen running around campus were thirteen or fourteen when the invasion occurred. They will be voting. Do they know, I wonder, what they are voting about?

One of the benefits of having a livejournal, for me, is that it keeps me honest. I was a good Economist reading lad back in the day, and remember that I was a tacit supporter of the war in Iraq based upon the notion that I thought it was a bad idea for Saddam Hussein to have WMD. And had any such been found, I would probably still be a reluctant supporter of our current action, despite the costs. I trusted that there was no way that our government would lie about that or make such a heavy decision with anything less than solid information.

I don't know if I will be able to trust subsequent administrations, but I learned very quickly that I would never be able to trust this one again.