Bill & Ted's Irish Misadventure

The Clinton administration's meddling has put Ireland on the road to becoming another Bosnia. But it's not too late to change.

Michael McMenamin from the August/September 1996 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

Kennedy then set to work on Clinton. It wasn't a walkover, but the president was favorably predisposed. Clinton felt guilty because he already had reneged on hasty campaign promises made in the 1992 New York presidential primary to appoint a "special envoy" to Northern Ireland and to grant a visa to Gerry Adams. Now Ted was asking to redeem more than Clinton's campaign promises. He and John Hume wanted the United States to join the Irish government's appeasement of Gerry Adams and the IRA, disregarding the wishes of its ally, Great Britain.

This didn't bother Clinton because he and some of his senior advisers relished the chance to step on the British lion's tail as a payback for the Conservative Party's ill-advised assistance to the Bush re-election campaign. In convincing Clinton to grant Adams's visa, Kennedy and Hume had two aces in the hole. One was the Clintons' faltering health care proposal. To support his request for a 48- hour visa for Adams, Kennedy recruited key Senate Democrats, including Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, John Kerry of Massachusetts, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. All told, Kennedy managed to get 40 members of Congress to sign a letter urging Clinton to grant Adams the visa. If Clinton acquiesced in the visa for Adams, he would have a call on them when crunch time came for health care. The second ace in the hole was a senior member of the National Security Council, Nancy Soderberg, who had been Kennedy's chief foreign policy aide and a foreign policy adviser in the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and Clinton. Soderberg knew John Hume, admired him and his nonviolent policies, and opposed the IRA's physical force nationalism. But the Hume-Adams pact and Kennedy persuaded her to reconsider her opposition to the IRA, and she in turn was very influential in persuading Clinton and her boss, NSC chief Anthony Lake.

When Adams's visa was granted, the White House did not pretend that vital American interests were involved. A February 10, 1994, story in TheNew York Times quoted American officials to the effect that Clinton had decided to grant the visa "mainly for domestic political reasons," citing the influence of the Irish-American delegation in Congress. Soderberg herself was aware of the risk the administration was running. In the same story the Times quoted "one staff member of the National Security Council"-- undoubtedly Soderberg--as saying: "In the end, it might do some good. I must admit that my heart is in my throat when I think about how it could all go wrong." It might do some good? Not a very sophisticated rationale for a foreign policy--and this from its architect. The next time, Nancy should keep her heart where it belongs and rely on her principles and values rather than the lilting blandishments of a provincial politician like John Hume. Appeasement of political violence in a democracy is wrong. Nancy Soderberg once knew that.

To Bill and Ted's disappointment, the February 1994 visa didn't produce an IRA cease-fire. That took until the end of August 1994, after Clinton gave a visa to 74-year-old Joe Cahill, who had been convicted in Dublin in 1973 of attempting to import arms and explosives from Libya. Like Adams, he had served on the IRA's ruling military council. What did the British and the Ulster Protestants think of all this? Not much. But then, they were never asked. As one anonymous White House official said, "It obviously ticks off the Brits, but equally obvious, that is acceptable to a lot of us."

The Unionist paramilitary cease-fire was announced in October 1994. After that, it was all downhill, culminating in Adams's third visa in early 1995, which explicitly permitted him to raise funds for Sinn Fein. As before, the British and the Ulster Protestants weren't consulted. During the rest of the year, to the IRA's disappointment, the United States failed in its attempts to persuade the British to pressure the Ulster Protestants into peace talks. The Protestants had little reason to be enthusiastic, since the IRA refused to declare its cease-fire permanent and refused to consider a token "decommissioning" of its weapons before all-party talks in Northern Ireland.

Nevertheless, the cease-fire held just long enough for Clinton to make his December 1995 trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland, becoming the first sitting American president to visit both. While there, Clinton showed superficial signs of sensitivity to Ulster Protestants: his visit to Violet's Fruit Store in Belfast, next door to where 10 people had died in an IRA bombing in October 1993; his purchase there of six oranges and two green apples; and his reference in a speech to the land of the "harp and the fiddle, the fife and lambeg drum," an evenhanded tribute to both wings of Northern Ireland's musical movement. But for militant Protestant Orangemen, who have been in Ireland longer than we have been in America, it will take more than six oranges to erase the image of Gerry Adams scarfing Dublin Bay prawns and Irish whiskey truffles with Bill and Ted at the White House.

In one Northern Ireland speech, Clinton dismissed the IRA and the Unionist paramilitaries, telling them, "You are the past; your day is over." He was premature. A month later, in January, IRA killings resumed at a pace of one a week. They shot Francis Collins in his fish and chips shop. They murdered Martin McCrory through his living room window as he watched television. They shotgunned Ian Lyons as he sat in his car with his girlfriend, Sheena McAlinden. The IRA initially denied the killings, but as one West Belfast Catholic politician said, "I think the very dogs in the street know it's the IRA that are doing this."

Bill and Ted helped hasten the cease-fire's end by mishandling the weapons issue, misunderstanding the British and the Ulster Unionists, and promising more to the IRA than they could deliver. After the initial cease-fire from both sides in late 1994, the Irish government, the British government, and the Unionists made clear that all-party talks must be preceded by a permanent cease-fire--an unequivocal repudiation of violence--and at least token gestures from both the IRA and the Protestant paramilitaries toward decommissioning their weapons. The IRA stonewalled on both issues, and the Irish government caved in to the IRA's hard line. So did Bill and Ted. The Unionists didn't.

They refused to come to the table with an IRA gun at their back.

British Prime Minister John Major then came up with a new approach in late January. He acknowledged the IRA's intransigence and agreed to the all-party talks without a permanent cease-fire and without decommissioning of weapons, but only on the condition that the all-party talks take place after special elections to choose delegates to the all-party talks. It was a good idea because it persuaded the Unionists to agree to what they previously had rejected: all-party talks before a permanent cease-fire and before decommissioning.

The Unionists relished the opportunity to contrast their political base with the IRA's in a free election. The IRA and Gerry Adams accused the British of stalling, but that wasn't the point. Elections were. The IRA had earned its place for Adams at the table through terrorism. Now, that place would have to be earned through freely cast votes. Accepting Major's proposal was an act of courage on the part of David Trimble, the Unionist leader. By abandoning his position on decommissioning, he risked a resumption of Unionist violence and renewed political strength for the ultra-militant Rev. Ian Paisley. Unfortunately, Trimble's courageous gesture was not met with a comparable response from the White House, where the only profiles in courage are located in Bill's copy of Jack Kennedy's book on the subject.

Refusing to acknowledge the Unionists' concession and Major's breakthrough in getting them to buy it, the White House took a neutral stance. Privately, Bill apparently encouraged his pal, Ted, joined by Sen. Christopher Dodd, to give the IRA a different--and dangerous--message. "There cannot be an added precondition," said Kennedy, rejecting the idea of special elections. Dodd went further, saying "it is the British who have to be nudged to give us a specific plan quickly"--about as explicit an invitation to violence as you can imagine from a sitting member of Congress.

The IRA was listening carefully, and exactly seven days later it delivered the "nudge" Christopher Dodd's careless words had invited: the 1,000-pound bomb in Canary Wharf. Bill and Ted still don't get it.New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman expressed well the vision Clinton has for Northern Ireland: "There is no room for a territorial solution here. The Northern Irish are doomed to live together. That is why the only solution is some variation of the London-Dublin Framework Document, worked out in February, under which Catholics would have to settle for blurry links to the Irish Republic and Protestants blurry links to Britain, and they would both have to accept a blurry power-sharing arrangement, in which neither side would have the upper hand." Have to accept? Have to settle?

It makes you want to pick Clinton up by the shoulders, shake him, and shout: "It's the bloody Protestants, stupid! You can't ignore them!" The key to peace in Northern Ireland lies with persuading the majority. Noting how the Catholic Church dominates Ireland's politics and culture, the Protestants are understandably wary of "links" to the republic, blurry or not. They know they don't have to accept or settle for anything unless they are persuaded to do so. And certainly not at the point of a gun, because many of them have guns, too. Sadly, all God's children have guns in Northern Ireland.

There are a few positive signs, however. After some initial posturing and finger- pointing, the Irish and British governments got down to business and, without the meddlesome Americans, quickly agreed in March to Major's proposal for special elections to choose delegates to the all-party talks. They scheduled the elections for May 30, with the talks beginning on June 10. Sinn Fein was permitted to take part in the special elections but denied a role in the all-party talks unless the IRA resumes its cease-fire. Sinn Fein has also come under criticism in the South. After the May 30 elections, the Sunday Independent in Dublin called on the Irish and British governments to "end the appeasement of the Republican movement," warning that to do otherwise "would be a betrayal of democracy on this island...that could set the stage for civil war." Another encouraging development is that the Unionist paramilitaries have maintained their cease-fire despite the resumed violence from the IRA.