I haven't had a chance to read my print version of the Sunday Independent yet, but as Frank, Jon & Dick are all getting in on this one, I'll comment on Eoghan Harris's column from Sunday.
I think Harris is right on the money when he describes the reaction of the Irish media (and the sanctimonious set from Ireland's middle class) to George Bush & Tony Blair. Robert Fisk and Lara Marlowe are the two primary Middle East reporters/analysts for the Irish media and neither of them could be called "pro-American". The term "Trot" that Dick doesn't like is easy enough to understand if you read Harris's columns regularly. These people pretty much own RTE and the Irish Times.
Of course, I think it's important that Harris continues his assault on the "Trots", but I'm not sure what he wrote this Sunday is significantly different than what he wrote in September of last year, however. Harris understands better than anyone the importance of "staying on message". He keeps returning to the same theme because, clearly, so many in RTE and the Irish Times are doing the same with their "Texan Terrorist" messages.
I think Harris's possibly faulty analysis of Lincoln and Roosevelt are besides the point because he's essentially correct about Bush. The National Security Strategy, issued in September of last year, was an extremely interventionist document. And, although Harris uses the term "pacifist" - I think isolationist is more accurate - he's right about the difficulty Bush would have had selling the Iraq war as the start of a Middle East transformation.
This argument surfaced occasionally in the run-up to the war, but it didn't get the airplay that the WMD did. I'm not sure why that is, but I presume it's because there's no way the UN Security Council would have sanctioned anything as radical as a democratic transformation of the Islamic world. And, there's no way the American people would have accepted the need to be so involved in the Middle East.
