DISPATCHES FROM THE EDGE:Irish Neutrality & The U.S.
“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.”
Proclamation of Easter Week 1916
Controlling their own destiny has always been a bit of a preoccupation for the Irish, in large part because for 735 years someone else was in charge. From the Norman invasion in 1169 to the establishment of the Free State in 1922, Ireland’s political and economic life was not its own to determine. Its young men were shipped off to fight England’s colonial battles half a world away, at Isandlwana, Dum Dum, Omdurman and Kut. Almost 50,000 died in World War I, choking on gas at Ypres, clinging desperately to a beachhead at Gallipoli, or marching into German machine guns at the Somme.
When the Irish finally cast off their colonial yoke, they pledged never again to be cannon fodder in other nation’s wars, a pledge that has now been undermined by the U.S. Once again, a powerful nation—with the acquiescence of the Dublin government—has put the Irish in harm’s way.
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