EXCERPT
from "Putting Britain’s Colonial War in Ireland
on Trial in the United States
It is always a nice little academic exercise for some professor to write and publish a
scholarly article that analyzes with clinical detachment a highly complicated and
extremely emotional mixed-dispute involving international law and international
politics along the lines of the previous chapter. It is quite another thing for that
professor then to go into a United States Federal District Court on behalf of a
defendant being prosecuted by the United States government for alleged
involvement in “international terrorism” and present that scholarly argument under
oath and subject to cross-examination by an Assistant United States Attorney under
the auspices of a hostile United Stated Federal District Judge. The courtroom has
always proven to be the “acid test” for any professor’s scholarly opinion. If the
professor can withstand withering cross-examination by the U.S. government’s
attorney and repeated hostile interruptions and questioning by the U.S. government’s
judge, then that is a pretty good indication that he must know what he is talking
about and, most importantly, that what he has to say is true. After all, the adversarial
nature of U.S. courtroom proceedings is specifically designed to bring to light the
truth so that justice might be administered on the basis of truth. At least that is the
theory of justice here in America.
This chapter sets forth a blow-by-blow account of what happened in a United States
Federal District Court when we put on trial Britain’s colonial war in Ireland in order to
defend a group of Irish citizens from prosecution by the United States government for
allegedly trying to purchase military weapons--including and especially a Stinger
missile--that were allegedly intended to be used by the Irish Republican Army to
shoot down British military helicopters in Northern Ireland at one of the most intense
moments in the conflict over there. The reader should get an excellent idea of what
happened in Federal Court when I presented the arguments set forth in Chapter 1 on
behalf of their Defense. You are free to draw your own conclusions about the validity
of what I had to say. But this slightly edited courtroom transcript certainly makes for
compelling reading.
Britain’s colonial occupation Army had established military outposts right near the
non-demarcated “border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that I
had already tried to tour myself in 1986. The I.R.A. had been so successful in its
military operations in these “border” areas that it had cutoff the capability of the
British Army to supply those outposts by ground transportation. So Britain had to
supply these Army outposts by military helicopters. At all times relevant to these
proceedings, American Stinger missiles were proving their deadly efficacy in
Afghanistan where the United States government had provided them
to the Mujahideen in order to shoot down the Soviet Union’s military helicopters
prosecuting their criminal invasion, occupation, and war against Afghanistan and its
People.
In this case, the basic theory of the Defense was that like the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan, Britain was fighting an illegal anti-colonial war in Northern Ireland and
therefore that the I.R.A. had the perfect right to use military force in self-defense
against military targets, including and especially by employing Stinger missiles. This
Defense was built upon the theoretical analysis set forth in my then draft working
paper The Decolonization of Northern Ireland, that is reprinted as later finally revised
and published as set forth in Chapter 1 above. Throughout this entire prosecution the
United States government was working at all times in full cooperation with the British
government--“our great and noble ally.”
The Federal District Judge was extremely hostile to the Defense and did everything
possible to shut it down. Furthermore, while the proceedings were taking place, the I.
R.A. was conducting major military operations against Britain that exerted a highly
deleterious impact on these legal proceedings here in the United States. Heavy-duty
security measures were imposed at the courthouse that were specifically intended by
the U.S. government to exert a negative emotional effect upon the jury. Yet, it was
well-known that as a matter of policy the I.R.A. did not launch military operations
anywhere near, in, or upon the United States of America, being its greatest source of
foreign support.
|
|
