Fintan O'Toole has yet another disappointing article about Martin McGuinness in the Irish Times this week. Barring certain issues I've always respected Fintan's views, but I really feel he's embarrassed himself whenever he's said anything on the issue of this presidential election. This week his general thesis is that 'five propositions advanced by McGuinness’s defenders still remain to be dealt with.'
Now, as I said, I'm no fan of McGuinness, but this kind of carry-on is embarrassing for all concerned. How is one ever expected to take Fintan seriously again when he comes out with this series of straw men?
1. Martin McGuinness is acceptable to the DUP in the North, so it is hypocritical to suggest that he should not be president.
This rather simplifies this point, which I've not been alone in making, and Fintan deals with it through some impressive sleight of hand.
'Martin McGuinness's role as deputy first minister is a function of the unique system of government created by the Belfast Agreement,' he says, as though the Good Friday Agreement had been come into being of its own accord. It did nothing of the sort, of course: the system of government created by the Belfast Agreement was created by the negotiators of the Belfast Agreement, which included the Irish Government, and by those who ratified the Belfast Agreement, those including the Irish electorate, 94 per cent of whom voted to insert a new article 29.7 into the Constitution, subsection 1 of which states:
'The State may consent to be bound by the British-Irish Agreement done at Belfast on the 10th day of April, 1998, hereinafter called the Agreement.'
The Good Friday Agreement had been opposed by the DUP, and the results of the Northern Irish referendum on the agreement make it very clear that it was voted against by the majority of Ulster's unionists. If the DUP had to embrace McGuinness and Sinn Féin as the price of entering government, this is because it's a price we set.
The Presidency, on the other hand, says Fintan, is not party political: 'it's the personal embodiment of collective values.' Is it? Or is that just what Fintan thinks it should be? Because I've been looking quite hard at articles 12, 13, and 14 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, and I don't see anything there that says the Presidency is the personal embodiment of anything.
2. The past should be forgotten – what happened during the conflict is now irrelevant.
Fintan doesn't believe this should be the case, but can appreciate, he says, that others might take this line. Unfortunately, he says, McGuinness and his supporters are inconsistent on this, such that, he says, 'Sinn Féin doesn’t actually believe that past atrocities should be forgotten. It demands accountability for war crimes – except when they were committed by the IRA.' Again, this isn't quite true. It's not really the case that Sinn Féin makes an exception for the IRA -- it doesn't demand accountability, as far as I know, for crimes committed by the UVF, LVF, UDA, INLA, or other groups.
If anything, it seems they demand accountability only for war crimes committed by the forces of the Crown, in the name of the Crown, against the subjects of the Crown, and they do so in light of how the Good Friday Agreement did not entail any amnesty, implicit or explicit, for the perpetrators of those crimes.
3. Eamon de Valera was elected president and Martin McGuinness would be no different.
Fintan's dismissal of this point is as curt as it is simplistic:
'Where is the evidence that de Valera committed, ordered or sanctioned war crimes? His one outing as a military commander was during Easter 1916, at Boland's Mills, where there was no fighting. The War of Independence was run by Michael Collins – Dev spent much of it in the US. During the Civil War, he was undoubtedly the political figurehead of the anti-Treaty side, but he had no control over the IRA.
In February 1923, he privately complained that he could only view the war "as through a wall of glass, powerless to intervene effectively".'
Does Fintan think the 1916 Rising was an attack against a peaceable and largely undefended city? If he does, how does he get round the fact that de Valera was involved in planning and leading such an attack? More importantly, does Fintan really think that Michael Collins ran the entire War of Independence, during which atrocities certainly were committed? And does Fintan really think that de Valera, the President of the Republic, would have been incapable of breaking that war to an end had he so tried? As for the Civil War, which de Valera largely provoked -- does Fintan really think de Valera was a mere victim of circumstances? Should we accept one private and self-serving claim as a full exoneration for his part in starting a war that killed thousands of Irish people in just a couple of years?
The fact is that both Sean T. O'Kelly and Eamon de Valera opposed the new state established under the Treaty, and warred against it, with O'Kelly having been imprisoned for his opposition to the State. And both men wound up holding the Presidency, for a total of twenty-eight years between them.
4. Martin McGuinness is like Nelson Mandela.
Other than both men having had a record of friendliness with Colonel Gaddafi, and both having followed paths that took them from violence to peace, I've never been convinced that this was a particularly convincing comparison, so I'll let Fintan go on that...
5. It is preposterous to suggest, as I did last week that, as president, Martin McGuinness "could, in principle, be liable to arrest for war crimes under international law".
Yes, it is. It was preposterous then and is no less preposterous now; and comparisons this week between McGuinness and Dick Cheney don't help Fintan's very silly case.
The comparison is utterly facile: were Cheney to be tried he would be tried by the International Criminal Court for events since 2002 in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in commection with rendition. Why 2002? Because the ICC has no remit over war crimes committed before that date. Indeed, no organisation has such a remit.
Perhaps Fintan can tell us which war crimes Martin McGuinness has committed since 2002?
6 comments:
If it were true that MM murdered innocents in contravention of God's law and the law of the land, and if he were today prepared to do it again if the same set of circumstances arose, do not believe that on these grounds alone he is unfit to be President of Ireland?
If. If. If.
Has that question ever been asked of Martin McGuinness? If not, why do you ask it of me?
And why that question anyway? Is your issue his past or a hypothetical future? After all, his past isn't wildly different, in principle, from two people who held the presidency before him, so that can't realistically be held against him in terms of fitness.
It seems that reduces your question down to 'would you be willing to kill innocent people if the Ireland you presided over were to magically become part of the UK, with Ireland's declining Catholic population being oppressed by Britain's declining Protestant one'?
To which I can only say that I'm pretty sure if that question were put to McGuinness he'd stare at you as though you were stark raving mad.
And then he might ask if you would be putting that question to others.
I find it no less absurd.
No, my issue is the present. I am out to judge the character of the man. To see if I would regard him fit for the office.
“If” questions are very important. For without them we would never be able to judge the consequences of our actions or commitments.
Your reference to previous Presidents is neither here nor there. They too may well have been unfit for their office.
The question does not reduce to what you would reduce it to. A better reduction would be:
'would you be willing to kill innocent people if the Ireland you presided over were in fact an established and integrated part of the UK, and with Ireland's declining Catholic population being discriminated against in the area of civil law by a portion of Britain's declining Protestant one'?
I think that is a fair enough question and I would regard his answering it affirmatively as rendering him unfit for office. Wouldn’t you?
And if I did not put the question to others, it would be because I am unaware that it would apply to them in fact. As far as I am aware they never did kill innocents in contravention of God’s law and the law of the land.
I think you protest too much.
You can think what you like, but given that you don't know me and haven't the basic manners to identify yourself in even the most rudimentary of ways, I'm not sure you get to judge.
What's more if you know anything about this, you'll know it was slightly more than civil law that was at issue in the North.
Now, to your question, again.
Is it conceivable that Martin McGuinness could be President, that is Head of State, of an independent Ireland, within the United Kingdom? The answer, surely, is that it is not, so the question is meaningless.
As to your comments on the others? As far as you are aware they never did kill innocents. Fair enough: that's not to say that they didn't, merely that you don't know one way or another.
As for McGuinness? Are you saying you are aware that he killed innocents? If so, could you please tell me precisely who he killed, when he killed them, and what weapon he was wielding when he did so?
The Presidency is a simple enough and almost wholly powerless position. To be fit for the office only two things are required: Irish citizenship, and having reached one's thirty-fifth year. Read the relevant sections of the Irish Constitution, and then read some history books, if you really are 'out to judge the character of the man' as you put it.
I’m sorry you feel I am being rude in not identifying myself beyond “Anonymous.” Since you blog publicly and allow those of us who are interested enough to read you to respond to you under the moniker “Anonymous”, it did not occur to me that I would be expressing rudeness by operating under the terms you thus set. Besides which, Thirsty Gargoyle?
My original question is not absurd. It is intelligible and answerable on its own terms, quite apart from whether its clausal hypotheses are in fact true or whether they could be “proved” in a court of law to be true. My purpose in asking it was to establish whether we possessed a common point of moral understanding. If it proved we did, then I was prepared to go further in the dialogue on that basis.
Let me ask it again in a slightly modified way:
If it were true that I murdered innocents in contravention of God's law and the law of the land, and if I were today prepared to do it again if the same set of circumstances arose, do you not believe that on these grounds alone I would be unfit to be President of Ireland?
Sorry, it's mainly because others do so too, and it's hard for me to tell if one anonymous is the same as another. I did hint rather strongly -- to you, I think -- that I could do with a name of some sort.
I hate the whole anonymity thing, to be frank. In my own case, my pseudonym is a grim necessity, forced upon me through experience. It's also not that hard to work out who I am, if anyone really wanted to try.
As to your question, I don't know. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't vote for you, but that's different from saying that I think you'd be unfit for the job. The thing is, people can think they'd know how they would react in a certain situation, but there's no guarantee they'd do so. That's one of the reasons I'm so uneasy with such hypothetical questions...
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