AMATEURS vs PROFESSIONALS by Donal Kennedy
I have been very busy recently and so many appalling things have been happening in the world at large not to mention in these neighbouring islands. So forgive me if the rambling piece below is too much of a reflection of states of chassis,
As a sunshine soldier and a summer patriot in the FCA I remember standing on a square with hundreds of my comrades at summer camp when we were addressed by the Minister for Defence. His speech was neither inspirational nor particularly objectionable and we neither cheered nor booed.
But all the Regular, Professional, Paid Officers answered the speech with a clapping of hands.
It’s said that many professionals have an obsession with the THREE Ps – Pay, Promotion, and Pension. An obsession which may lead to an obsequious crawling to their paymasters.
When a loutish Minister for Defence described our President, Cearbhall O Dalaigh as a
“Thundering Ballocks” in front of the Chief of Staff and other senior officers, the Orderly Officer
should have had the disorderly lout locked in the Guard Room until he sobered up.
The story emerged from a local reporter at the scene.
I strongly suspect that the Regular Officers gave their customary applause to the Minister, and
approved of his contempt to the Country’s Chief Citizen and Commander-in-Chief of its Defence
Forces.
When the loutish Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave clearly shared the Minister’s sentiments the President
resigned in order to preserve the prestige of his office.
Some of today’s professionals, with an eye for the main chance would like to see Michael D forced
out of office if he continues to advocate Ireland disentangling itself from from the offensive alliance
NATO.
U.S. President Eisenhower in his valedictory address to the growth of an American military industrial complex. The world’s most profitable manufacturer of military equipment, the American Lockheed Corporation, has created nexus with Irish Defence Force Officers, and academics carrying Irish passports and British decorations, the latter the fruit of disparaging the courage of men incarcerated without charge or trial who fasted to the death. These people were treated to a free lunch by Lockheed in Dublin.
These “Souper” Europeans who never lifted a finger nor raised their voices for the victims of NATO
members’ crimes in Africa, Asia, Latin America , Continental Europe or Northeastern Ireland want to
embroil Ireland in a conflict that could incinerate us all.
It was necessary “for Strategic interests, that some part of Ireland remain within His Majesty’s Dominions” wrote Britain’s Cabinet Secretary, in a Memorandum sent to His Majesty’s Prime
Minister in Westminster. HMPM Clement Attlee was at the time (1949) helping to establish NATO.
He marked the MEMO “Noted” and initialled it
Most of Ireland stayed out of NATO, but a couple of years after being admiitted to the United Nations
resumed the effort to establish a world order of international peace consistently pursued by Eamon
De Valera from 1932 at the League of Nations. Fianna Fail’s Frank Aiken worked from 1958 to 1968
to remove the threat of Nuclear War and in 1968 his work saw fruit in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, eventually signed by all the major powers and most of the members of the UN.
Adherence to that Treaty appeared to offer humanity security from the ultimate calamity and the first signature on was that of its architect, in Moscow, at the invitation of the Soviet Government. Forty five years earlier, at the age of 25, days after being made Chief of Staff of the Republican Army in Ireland’s Civil War, Aiken had ordered his men to cease fire and have their weapons lodged in secure dumps.
Neither he nor his colleagues ever enjoyed the largesse of war profiteers. President Higgins is not
from Aiken’s party but he is a man of similar principles.
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