War-planes at Shannon, Galway and Limerick

national | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Sunday June 24, 2007 22:51

by Edward Horgan

Children being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and being indoctrinated in Limerick

Protest at Shannon on Sat 23rd June, Galway airshow on Sunday 24th and the shocking attempts to indoctrinate GAA underage players into the myths of US military just wars

A 10 Thunderbolt war-planes at Shannon 23 June 07

Tragedy was narrowly averted at Salthill on Sunday 24 June 2007 when an RAF helicopter door fell into the crowd of voyeuristic onlookers watching war planes at the Galway airshow. Innocent children in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been so lucky. We don’t know just how many children have been killed by US and British warplanes, in these two wars over the past six years, but we do know that approximately 262,000 children had died directly or indirectly (Lancet Report) due to the war in Iraq alone. We know Ali Abbas who lost both hands when a U S Bomb fell on his home killed his pregnant mother, three siblings, and 14 other relatives. We do know that in Dec 2003 15 children were killed in south Afghanistan in two separate bombings involving US A10 warplanes. We do know that last week, on 18 June, 7 children were killed in Afghanistan also by bombs dropped by US warplanes. The latest such casualties were on 22 June when 10 year old Fatima Satar and her 9 year old sister Najeba were killed along with about 45 other villagers were killed when a US A10 Thuderbold aircraft bombed a house where a wedding was being celebrated. Several such wedding parties have been bombed by the US airforce and dozens of civilians have been killed also when mosques were deliberately targeted.
Ireland has been complicit in all these killings because of the abuse of Shannon airport and Irish airspace.
Many of the warplanes involved in the Galway war-show were based at Shannon for several days. A small protest was held by peace activists at Shannon on Saturday 23 June.
At one point panic ensued for a while as gardai, led by Inspector Clueso, carried out a frenzied search, not of CIA or US military aircraft, but of Shannon airport, looking for two missing peace activists, Conor Cregan and Edward Horgan, who were enjoying a peaceful lunch at the Shannon war-port. Other Anti War Ireland peace activists from Cork and Dublin distributed flower petals to airport customers in memory of children killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, the most cynical and outrageous event of the weekend occurred at a meeting of underage GAA players in Limerick on Sat morning 23 June 2007. An Piarsaigh GAA, club, according to their website, invited about 50 young boys, aged from five years old to ten years old to a meeting at the club under the guise that the US Ambassador was to visit “the club next Saturday morning, 23rd June to view the work we are doing with underage hurlers”. However, they were also “entertained” by a US air-force war-plane pilot Major Rob Skelton, presumably as an example of the sort of leadership to which these boys should aspire. It was one of the most cynical and exploitative examples of recruitment and propaganda that I have ever come across. One little five year old, asked Major Skelton, whether he had ever shot anyone dead. The answer he got was “not recently, little boy”.
I wish, I was making this up.
The peace and neutrality alliance will be lodging an official complaint with the President of the GAA, and with the US Ambassador, and with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.
People who enjoy airshows like the one in Galway are the equivalent of people who arrive at the scene of a serious road accident and take pleasure at viewing the dead and injured on the roadside. The RTE 9 pm news emphasised the value of this airshow to the Galway business community, and said it was worth over one million Euro. The pollution alone caused by the aircraft taking part in this disgraceful show caused far more that one millions euro worth of damage to the global environment.
The Green Party of which I am a member are now complicit in such outrageous behaviour and are also complicit in the most recent deaths of children in Afghanistan.
Our many words have been ignored over the past 6 years. It is now time to follow these words with peace actions that will remove US troops and US war-planes out of Shannon and out of Ireland
Edward Horgan

Shannon Gardai search in vain for Horgan and Cregan