Green Party in Co. Clare Firmly Behind US Military in Shannon

clare | anti-war / imperialism | news report Wednesday December 16, 2009 20:38 by Fred Johnston

The US Military can save Shannon, says Green Councillor

The Green Party have managed to lose even more credibility, if that were possible, by reiterating their belief that the US military presence in Shannon - which is PERMANENT, lest we forget - is good for the region

Last June Green Party TD Ciaran Cuffe's said he did not believe that Shannon airport was being used by US extraordinary rendition flights. At the same time, Co. Clare's own little Green man, Councillor Brian Meaney, mouthed off against protestors: “It is no longer acceptable that the conspiracy theorists and malcontents scaremongering over the use of Shannon by the US military continue to be a drain of Garda and Army resources”, he said in The Irish Times. Ed Horgan was misguided.

Councillor Meaney is at it again, digging a deeper hole for the Greens, if that were possible. In the current issue of the admirable 'The Clare People,' he tells Gordon Deegan that; "The US military business is a good foundation base for the Shannon Airport Authority to maintain (sic) and ensure that the airport can stay open and has services."

No doubt with pending invasions of Iran in mind and massive supplies of murder equipment passing through on the way to Israel for, eh, defence purposes, Cllr Meaney added: "I would hope that the management would increase their efforts to try to attract more military uses of the airport from all sides." No, not a trace of irony.

Clearly he's leaving the way open for negotiations for Russian, Chinese, UK and other military to establish bases at Shannon. For Cllr Meaney and the Greens, it's only business. In three years from '05 to '08, Shannon Airport made a profit of roughly €30 million from what is now called 'the troop business.' How many of these big spenders killed innocent civilians or razed wedding-parties in the wilds of Afghanistan is not recorded. How much bigger those profits might have been had blindfolded and chained prisoners been allowed off their 'planes and into the Duty Free for half an hour. And the Americans could be a tad more grateful: in November 2008, Delta Air Lines confirmed it would no longer be operating the non-stop Shannon-Atlanta service through this past Summer. Then they went and suspended their Shannon-New York (JFK) route in October 2009, clearly oblivious to the great cheer-leading work Cllr Meaney was doing for Uncle Sam. He didn't deserve that. {Let's forget that embarrassing 2005 governmental guff about the use of Shannon Airport as a stopover for US military being phased out by April 2008. Ireland doesn't own Shannon any more and didn't even then.}

Shannon is an economic mess. And a sad one. 'The Clare People' report adds that the only area of growth at Shannon is through US troop traffic. Ryanair won't be there next year. It is sad too to see a local Councillor praising the movement of foreign soldiers for keeping the local economy going - as if Shannon were a tiny French village in the 1940s where, if it weren't for the occupying German soldiers buying wine and ciggies, the local economy would fall apart.

Cllr Meaney hasn't quite grasped the openly-admitted fact that the Americans are in Shannon as an occupying force and are not leaving. The government, to which his Green Party is like a pilot fish around a shark, doesn't care.

"Ireland (can) play its part in relation to stabilizing a very unstable part of the world," added Cllr Meaney. Alas, he didn't indicate which part of the world he meant.