On Sat, 22 May 2021 I sent the following letter to the Editor, HISTORY IRELAND in response to an article by Mr. A.E. Connell Jr in that journal’s May/June issue.
As there was insufficient room for it in in the July/August issue of HISTORY IRELAND I’m happy to submit it for the edification or amusement of readers of this BLOG
“Editor
HISTORY IRELAND
Sir,
The account (May/June) given by Joseph E.A. Connell Jr. of the burning of the Customs House in Dublin starts with the statement that the burning of the Customs House in Dublin was a resounding propaganda success.
It ends with the suggestion that a better plan might have crowned that propaganda victory with a significant military success over the British Army.
Sandwiched between beginning and end of the account is an attempt to rubbish both the plan and execution of the operation.
Mr Connell invokes the names T.E. Lawrence, Carl Von Clausewitz, Field Marshal Karl Von Moltke, and Che Guevara, none of whom were familiar with the context of the “Tan War”.
Less than seven weeks elapsed between the burning on 25 May 1921 and the Truce of 11 July 1921.
That Truce was sought neither by the IRA nor by Dail Eireann, but by their British enemy.
Movie newsreels of a key British government building burning for days in the centre of Dublin were seen all over the world and could not be ignored.
In the 102 years since the Soloheadbeg ambush, the IRA, in its various guises, has been incapable of physically driving the enemy from anything more substantial than a fair sized police barrack, to borrow an expression from one IRISH expert, utttered in Dail Eireann and never denied..
Propaganda is the one necessary ingredient in a successful war.
United States forces in Vietnam were broken neither by guerrilla nor regular warfare.
However heretical according to dogma imbibed by Mr Connell, the TET offensive in Vietnam in 1968 was decisive.
Its propaganda impact destroyed Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency. It sundered the bipartisan support for the war in the United States Congress. And it undermined civilian support for the war’s continuation, and halted for some years American overseas aggression
Donal Kennedy
London”
Comments are closed.