Dis-United Kingdom

There's a piece of conventional wisdom about how to run post-war Iraq that had us wondering from the moment we heard it. It's that British troops are well placed to administer a restive civilian population because of their experience in Northern Ireland. This was such a dubious piece of conventional wisdom that the debunking cycle worked even quicker than usual. Here's an article making some pretty obvious criticisms -- but it's characteristic of the Bush administration to have some head-scratching justifications for policies out there, so the obvious criticisms have to be made (and duly ignored). We'd like to add just one basic point in addition to the pretty tarnished record (collusion, Bloody Sunday) to which the article draws attention. Whatever one's opinions about national boundaries, Iraq was a sovereign independent country invaded, for good or ill, by the US and the UK. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom -- or when the spouters of conventional wisdom make these analogies, do they have in mind that Northern Ireland is really not part of the UK? Even the vast majority of us in Ireland whose ability with the Irish language is terrible know how to translate the old IRA slogan, Tiocfaidh ar la. Our day will come. But how does one say Our day is already here?