Sunday June 25, 2006
You cannot defend your way of life by giving it up
GALWAY, IRELAND: As I write this column from Ireland, the birthplace of modern terrorism, I\’m reminded of what we might learn from Ireland\’s experience.
We Canadians have had only three brief brushes with terrorism – the FLQ crisis in Quebec, the Air India bombing, and now the arrest of 17 alleged Islamic activists.
The Air India bombing was essentially ignored by all but the victims\’ families, and was bungled by law enforcement agencies.
Now the 17 arrested men begin to look more like a bunch of rebellious teenagers mouthing off than like an international conspiracy.
In the U.S., the destruction of the World Trade Center actually killed fewer people, proportionately, than the Air India bombing. A previous attempt on the World Trade Centre had next to no impact.
You have to go to Jerusalem, London, or Belfast, to experience how people have lived with the daily threat of terrorism.
Mismanaging incidents
The first thing we might learn from their experience is that terrorism is not ignited by inflammatory speeches in mosques or temples or political gatherings. It grows out of generations – often centuries – of grievance.
We in North America seem to believe that muzzling the firebrands will resolve the problem. But the firebrands are a symptom, not a cause.
The causes go deeper. In Ireland, the roots go back to two British kings, both named William. William the Conqueror granted vast estates in Ireland to his nobles after his conquest of England in 1066. And William of Orange brutally suppressed an Irish rebellion against English colonial rule in 1670.
The potato famine of the 1840s exacerbated the situation. Millions starved. Millions more emigrated. Every family was affected. Empty ruined farmhouses still dot Ireland\’s west.
While the British parliament continued to export grain from Ireland!
Ancient grievances eventually led to the Irish uprising of 1916 when a handful of young rebels – about as organized as the 17 “terrorists” in Ontario – seized the General Post Office in Dublin.
Because this was during wartime, Britain treated the act as treason. It ruthlessly executed the rebels. And gave the Irish some martyrs to place on a pedestal.
That repression led to civil war and Irish independence in 1949. And thence to the “Troubles” that hit Northern Ireland in 1968. The IRA, the Irish Republican Army, eventually carried its campaign of violence into London. During 1973 alone, the IRA exploded 36 bombs in the British capital.
Yet today relations in Ireland between north and south, between Catholic and Protestant, are probably better now than they have ever been.
Unimaginable situations
I was in Belfast in 1974, at the height of the Troubles. It was a situation that few North Americans could imagine.
Soldiers walked back to back, for mutual protection. Tanks clanked through downtown streets. Convoys of Land Rovers patrolled residential neighborhoods.
There were roadblocks and security barricades everywhere. You could not shop without being searched as you passed through a security checkpoint into the downtown area; you could not enter a store without being searched again. Drivers expected to have their vehicles searched at randomly placed roadblocks. Border crossings invoked rigid security.
Some streets had 30-foot barricades down the center – too high for anyone to lob a grenade or Molotov cocktail over. Police stations were ringed by 50-gallon drums filled with sand – far enough out to dissipate the blast from car bombs.
But the ordinary people refused to be cowed. Despite bombs and shootings, they continued to shop. They went to church. They went to work. They stepped over sharp shooters lying prone on all four corners of an intersection, covering each other, weapons trained down the street for any sign of trouble.
And their leaders kept talking. To identify and overcome the causes of historic grievances.
Important lessons
As Michael Byers editorialized in the Toronto Star, “The IRA taught the British an all-important lesson. If you are fighting to defend your way of life, you must not give up your way of life.”
It was never a religious struggle, although the mass media persistently portrayed it that way. It was a class struggle – between the haves and the have-nots. It was a political struggle – between those loyal to Britain, and those who opposed to Britain. And it was a colonial struggle, between those who benefitted from British rule, and those who felt penalized by it.
It just happened that in each struggle, one side was primarily Protestant, and the other primarily Catholic.
Since 1998, violence in Ireland has virtually disappeared. There is now no discernable border between north and south in Ireland – no searches, no document checks, no immigration barriers.
Ireland\’s entry into the European Union has transformed former economic inequities. The north is no longer the economic powerhouse; the south is no longer poverty stricken.
And Irish churches are working together in ways that put most North American denominations to shame.
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Contrast that with Canada, where three levels of police forces made a television spectacle of parading the alleged terrorists into courtrooms.
Contrast it even more with the U.S., where a paranoid national administration has castrated dissent as unpatriotic, curtailed constitutional freedoms for citizens and suspended the rule of law for suspected terrorists, permitted and even encouraged the caricature of all Arabs and Muslims as potential enemies, and launched two unwinnable wars – all in the name of stopping terrorism.
Instead of copying the more mature experience of both British and Irish leaders during the last four decades, Canadian and American leaders have chosen to imitate the policies that failed so miserably between 1066 to 1949.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks, bewildered Americans wondered, “Why do they hate us so much?”
I don\’t hear the question being asked much any more. Both our countries seem to place increasing emphasis on military solutions.
But the question deserves revisiting. Again. And again. Because until it is resolved, terrorism will not be.
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Copyright © 2006 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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