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Home Page > Blogs > News blogs > Periscope > Vicious attacks on presidential candidate Martin McGuinness begin -- Absurd call to have him arrested as war criminal

Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

Vicious attacks on presidential candidate Martin McGuinness begin -- Absurd call to have him arrested as war criminal

Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 06:47 AM

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The Irish presidential race gets nastier every day since Martin McGuinness entered.

He has touched a raw nerve among the Little Irelanders,who want nothing more than to keep their little Republic to themselves and bitterly oppose any interference from the likes of McGuinness.

We are witnessing the last throw of the dice of the revisionists who would much rather a wall was built around Northern Ireland many years ago and then have averted their eyes to whatever needed to be done.

The latest extraordinary outburst was by Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole who proclaimed that Martin McGuinness if he became president of Ireland, could be arrested for war crimes if he traveled abroad because of his role with the IRA.

"Should we appoint a head of State who could be liable to arrest for war crimes under international law?," he asked in his column.

The blindingly obvious retort is that Nelson Mandela, founder of the ANC, an organization that invented 'necklacing' where a burning tire was placed around a victim's neck, could be arrested too under O'Toole's definition.

That did not stop Mandela getting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

O'Toole's comments also ignored the reality of the history of his own state.

Sean MacBride, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Nobel Peace Prize winner was a Chief of Staff of the IRA.

Two previous presidents of Ireland, Eamon De Valera and Sean T O'Ceallaigh were members of the IRA before going into politics.

McGuinness is following a long tradition in Irish politics of putting aside the gun and entering politics.

He is head and shoulders above those competing for the race against him in terms of accomplishment.

His two major rivals, Gay Mitchell of Fine Gael and Michael D. Higgins of the Labor Party are second tier candidates from within their own parties.

McGuinness has an amazing track record as a peacemaker, playing a huge role in ending the IRA campaign. forging a deal with Ian Paisley and later with Peter Robinson to share power in Northern Ireland.

It was world statesman stuff, ending an horrific conflict, and was acknowledged everywhere from the Oval Office to indeed, Mandela himself.

It seems like O'Toole and others like him want to forget the last twenty years of incredible progress in Ireland and focus only on McGuinness's IRA past.

Well then, O'Toole,who almost wept with joy when the Queen agreed to visit her former subjects, should apply the same criteria to her majesty and her family.

Prince Charles is Commander in Chief of the Parachute Regiment which killed innocent civilians in Derry in 1972.

Should he be retroactively banned from Ireland?

Of course not. The reality is that the Irish Republic was forged in war and violence,like the United States once was.

We can no more ignore that history than we can the impact The Troubles had on Ireland North and South.

Martin McGuinness was a key player in ending those troubles, arguably the single biggest achievement on the island of Ireland for the past 100 years or so.

O'Toole is revealing a little Ireland mentality that infects many of the great and the good on that island.

Alas, we will be seeing it manifest itself again and again in the coming weeks

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66 Comments

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GeorgeDillon | Sep 26, 2011, 02:39 PM EDT

What a nasty racist you are, eiriamach. And a nitwit too, because you put your silly (sic) after the description of you (amadan) but in every post you leave out the sineadh fada on your own moniker. Still, why should you spell it right--don't feel bad. I'm assuming you're American. 95% of the Irish can't spell in Irish either, and 99.999% of the foreign migrants in Ireland have no interest in the language. And yet the migrants are the ones you look to to invigorate Irish language and culture! What a chump you are, eiriamach, are you for real or just a troll? No rational person could come out with that garbage. And there's no need to tell us about the effects of migration on the American Indian. We know you can use google--it doesn't impress. But you're an utter racist hypocrite, with your crocodile tears about the American Indian even while you're cheerleading the capitalists and globalists who are pumping foreign settlers into Ireland.

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eiriamach | Sep 25, 2011, 04:12 PM EDT

Oh yes, RE: my screen name, GeorgeD, please see Niall Ó Dónaill’s Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla: "An tÉirí Amach" translates as “the (Easter Week) Rising,” but “éirí amach” translates “outing, pleasure trip, first visit of bride to old home; muster, levy; up-rising, insurrection, revolt” (pp. 489-490 of the paperback edition, 2005). Mis-spelled? Only in leaving out the accents and by contracting to one word, as is often done on the 'net, to facilitate a reply by screen name for anyone who wishes to reply to anything I’ve written (they should not have to take the time to insert accents). Check it out! You'll have to put up with it because I'm not likely to change it, unlike some others who switch names or use multiple names when others attack them.

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eiriamach | Sep 25, 2011, 03:13 PM EDT

The European settlers waged war, genocide, and epidemic diseases against Native Americans, GeorgeD, and drove survivors onto reservations. Considering what the European descendants have done to the land since they arrived, I sometimes think it would have been better for them to assimilate, especially into a Lakota Sioux way of life. At least our natural environment would have survived! But the European settlers arrived with modern weaponry and a determination to "own" the land, strip it of its resources, and exploit it commercially. I see NO ANALOGY between the recent arrivals in Ireland and the European settlers of the USA. So I do not fear the loss of Irish culture! You have not convinced me, nor anyone else, I'd bet. GeorgeD, I know of no other IC visitor who can assemble as many ad hominems in one com box as you can, yet your insults haven't the thinnest veneer of truth. I noticed recently that some commenter pointed out the hypocrisy of your rants against foreigners by simply mentioning that in your visits abroad, you are a foreigner! Right. It looks like you got that point; you write, "I am a foreigner in every country in the world save two--are you such an amadan [sic] that you think I am hostile to myself?" So I conclude you can learn; you can even change your tune! Nor will I engage in a tit-for-tat with you about racism: your record remains unchallenged in that field.

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GeorgeDillon | Sep 25, 2011, 10:49 AM EDT

Our racist straw man eiriamach appears to think that settling in a place means you acquire the culture of that place. I guess that means that if I go to Minneapolis or Rapid City the culture all around me will be Lakota Sioux, since that was the culture into which huge numbers of settlers migrated well over a century ago. After all, her craziness predicts that foreign settlers in Ireland will become Irish, so her thought process, if we can dignify it with such a term, must predict that the settlers of the lands of the Lakota are now indistinguishable from Sitting Bull! Didn't they "integrate" well! Similarly, this nitwit would predict that if I go to Tel Aviv I will find myself in an Arab city, since the culture of that place was Arab until just a couple of generations ago. Utter nonsense and garbage, eiriamach. You need to go traveling a bit more. Go to Minneapolis or Fargo, you fool, you'll find that the culture of the original inhabitants of those lands is long extirpated. Go to Tel Aviv--those Arabs who lived in Tel Aviv are nowhere to be seen. They have been exiled to concentration camps by your fellow-racists. What a nasty bigot you are. You want the Irish to suffer the same fate as the Sioux and the Cherokee and the Palestinians. Stop using that faux ID "eiriamach". Ignoring its misspelling, it means rebellion or uprising. An ultra conservative bigot like you has no business claiming to be a rebel. If you support globalization, that's your business, eiriamach (sic) but stop posturing as a progressive while supporting the destruction of indigenous cultures. You're a reactionary and a racist.

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warrenpoint00 | Sep 25, 2011, 10:06 AM EDT

I wish Martin well in his presidential bid but why would a confirmed Irish nationalist like him want to preside over a broken down inept little statlet that has been a complete failure since its partition in 1922 from the proud and glorious nation of Ireland

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eiriamach | Sep 25, 2011, 08:14 AM EDT

I certainly understand a "straw man" when I read one, George. The phrase "straw man" does not refer to a person; it refers to an argument that over-simplifies the opposing side's argument. In committing the straw man fallacy, a person sets up a simplistic argument, easily shot down, but not an accurate representation of the opposition's words. If indeed I exaggerated when I used the phrase "racial purity" to refer to your repeated diatribes against immigrants and non-whites in particular, it wasn't very far from an accurate representation. And btw, logic is not a matter of "manners." It may not be polite to call you a racist, but it is accurate, isn't it? And I'm far from the first to have done it.

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GeorgeDillon | Sep 25, 2011, 02:49 AM EDT

"Being Irish is not a matter of "racial purity." I never said it was, you fool. You probably don't understand the concept of "straw man". I'll explain it for you. It refers to clowns like you who ascribe arguments or language to an opponent that that opponent has never used, and then attack them! You specialize in that inanity--witness your claim that I am hostile to "foreigners". What an utter fool you are. I am a foreigner in every country in the world save two--are you such an amadan that you think I am hostile to myself? Do us a favor--refrain from addressing me until you have the basic good manners to deal with what I say, not with what you say. Learn some manners, you poltroon.

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eiriamach | Sep 24, 2011, 05:45 PM EDT

Now I think finally understand GeorgeDillon's obsessive hostility to 'foreigners' and 'immigrants.' He writes, "What do you think is wrong with Irish nationality and ethnicity that makes it unworthy to survive among the nations of the world?" George, if you had two or three more lifetimes and spent them producing a 100-volume book on Irish history and culture, you'd have some sense of what it is to be Irish: cultúr, dúchas, heritage, the values and ideas and arts and temperaments and memories of the generations. None of that is programmed into your DNA, George. You think it's genetic, don't you? If you really are Irish-descended, you're a hybrid, maybe a hodge-potch, what we call in the USA a mutt, and not a pedigree! Being Irish is not a matter of "racial purity." Your obsession with ethnicity strikes me as 1930s German thinking rather than Irish of any era. It's a bit on the narrow side of "ethnicity."

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FallsRNat | Sep 24, 2011, 05:24 PM EDT

hooray

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GeorgeDillon | Sep 24, 2011, 12:52 PM EDT

citizen69, your point about foreign corporations is really stupid. What foreign corporation ever demanded that Ireland import a million foreign migrants, many of them with no skills. Check out the ones shining shoes, or giving out free newpapers, or flipping burgers--I guess you'll tell us that Intel demanded that these be imported to Ireland--what arrant nonsense you come out with. And ignorant, too, because you appear to be unaware that there was large-scale foreign investment in Ireland in the 1990s, long before the crazy policy of Mass Importation was adopted by Fianna Fail and the Irish capitalist class.

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GeorgeDillon | Sep 24, 2011, 12:47 PM EDT

Ireland has gained many benefits from the EU! So how come the country is broke and passing the begging bowl? I guess one of those benefits is that Ireland gets to pay child welfare to Polish, Latvian etc children who have never even been in Ireland! Or who in many cases probably don't even exist. And I hear that the new phenomenon is of elder immigration, old folks from Lithuania, Romania Latvia etc are moving to Ireland, because Irish welfare is so much better than in their own countries. I certainly was impressed by the number of elderly foreigners I saw shuffling around the shopping malls in Ireland when I visited a few weeks back. And I was also astonished by the vast numbers of Indians and Pakistanis, of all ages, --did India and Pakistan join the EU while I wasn't looking? If not, why are the Irish capitalists importing these people? Will the Irish capitalists pay for the health care and education of these Indians and their children? Sure they will, just like they've paid to educate and provide healthcare for all those they have imported since 2000. Not.... The Irish bosses privatized the profits of Mass Immigration, but they socialized the costs. And all of that without one minute's debate in the Irish Parliament in more than a decade of Mass Immigration.

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citizen69 | Sep 24, 2011, 10:21 AM EDT

@GeorgeDillon my "logic" doesn't suggest you go out and murder anyone! How did you come to such a silly conclusion!? I just believe you should afford the same entitlement to others as you or you're family have had afforded to them when you/they emigrated to the USA. Don't you think there are people in America who think there are too many Irish immigrants in the US? Had they got their way they woulda sent your family packing back to where you came from. Don't get me wrong, i don't believe Ireland should just open it's doors to anyone and hand out benefits and "entitlements" to all who enter but the Republic is part of the European Union and has gained many benefits from that in the past. Do you also want the foreign-owned companies in Ireland that are responsible for over 90% of Ireland's exports to get out too? How many Irish jobs depend on Foreign corporations? Where did you get your figures from as they seem too high to me? The Guardian states Ireland has 504,000 immigrants (11.4% of pop.)

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maireadinmelb | Sep 24, 2011, 03:30 AM EDT

@Tom I have not heard a heartfelt apology for the oppression and murder of irish people from the british or from loyalists! Why must the organisation that only exists as a result of british terrorism have to apologise if no other group is expected to do the same!

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maireadinmelb | Sep 24, 2011, 03:27 AM EDT

@citizen69 was that the same deal they offered in 1980 for the first hunger strike! The Strike was done by the prisoners against SF instructions! The prisoners wanted the 5 demands not the scraps from the british table! Getting so Sick of the revision of history that has occured since america became a victim of terrorism! USA the country that funded the IRA now turning on it's past! see a pattern occurring?

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Woodman | Sep 23, 2011, 11:41 PM EDT

Fintan O'Toole always wants to put Irish people in jail. He never said boo about the Birmingham 6, supported the Thatcher during the hunger strikes. And of course he opposed the US Visa for Gerry Adams claiming President Clinton was caving to terrorism. So he fought the peace process tooth and nail, it would be caving into terrorism. He never wanted negotiations, so it doesn't surprise me that he opposes McGuiness. O'Toole is just a bitter hate-filled man.

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