Rabid Irish imperialism
The Irish Independent (registration required) reports that a group of Irish soldiers in Liberia have attacked a group of Liberians.
A crack unit from the Irish Army Ranger Wing has rescued a group of captive villagers who were being beaten and raped by gunmen from renegade Government of Liberia (GOL) forces.
Twenty heavily armed Rangers, part of a special UN operations task group, stormed a container where the 35 men and women were being held prisoner and rescued them.
The Ranger patrol detained the renegade commander, known as “Prince”, and the deputy commander of the GOL forces during the rescue operation.
The rest of the kidnap gang is believed to have fled across the border into Guinea.
Acting on an intelligence tip-off, the Irish troops were dropped by helicopter into the town of Gbapa in the northern sector of Nimba county and about 300 kilometres north-east of the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
. . .
The two suspects, who are part of a group loyal to former Liberian president Charles Taylor, were then handed over to local police following the rescue on Tuesday evening and were transferred for questioning yesterday to a police station in Monrovia.
Many of the hostages were taken to a medical centre for treatment by local doctors and Irish medics as a result of the rapes and beatings inflicted upon them while in captivity.
I expect the Irish anti-war left to be all over this. To tell us that we have heard these excuses before, but we all know that this is about diamonds. After all, there is rape and torture and murder all over the world, but do you see Irish troops in the Congo? Of course not. To tell us that the Irish government may claim this is a humanitarian effort, but we know better.
I expect the Irish anti-war left to be all over this. And pigs will fly.
UPDATE: Good satire is really hard to do, and should be done only if you have the talent for it, which is why I should try to avoid it. I was sufficiently unclear in the above that I misled Dick O’Brien of Back Seat Drivers into thinking I was condemning the Irish troops. Not in the least. I agree completely with Dublin Gal that the Irish troops should be commended for a job well done. The Irish also did good work in East Timor. My goal was not to pick on the Irish government or its military. It was to abuse the Irish left. The morning I posted it, I was talking to a couple of Irish academic lefties who regularly spew out International ANSWER type stuff, and demanded to know why the Irish mission could be regarded as humanitarian, since the Irish army was not in other trouble spots around the globe. Their response was that the Irish army could not be everywhere, even though they regularly insist that the US occupation of Iraq cannot have a humanitarian element because there are trouble spots in the world where the US has not intervened. They refused to explain the difference to me. As government’s go, the Irish government is actually pretty good, and I have a lot of respect for the Irish military. But much of the Irish left is, well, repulsive.