Opinion

Deaglán de Bréadún: Actions of US can have implications for us all

US President John F Kennedy acknowledges the cheers of the crowd when he visits New Ross, Co Wexford in June 1963
US President John F Kennedy acknowledges the cheers of the crowd when he visits New Ross, Co Wexford in June 1963 US President John F Kennedy acknowledges the cheers of the crowd when he visits New Ross, Co Wexford in June 1963

PRESIDENT John F Kennedy visited the town of New Ross, County Wexford, on June 27 1963.

Having flown in from Dublin by helicopter, he addressed the wildly enthusiastic crowd of more than 10,000 people at the quay where his great-grandfather Patrick Kennedy had left for Boston via Liverpool in the previous century.

In his speech, the President said: “It took nearly 115 years to make this trip – and 6,000 miles and three generations.”

There’s a statue of JFK on the quay now and a Kennedy Summer School normally takes place in New Ross every year. It was put on hold in 2020 due to the pandemic but the event resumed last weekend, subject to the usual Covid precautions, as well as being streamed online.

Panel discussions on issues of the day were at the core of the proceedings.

A wide-ranging session on Irish politics consisted of four first-time TDs, all of them women, with political journalist Mary Regan of RTÉ in the chair.

Northern Ireland featured in a separate discussion on the Dublin government’s Shared Island initiative and, in a Saturday morning symposium, academics discussed the centenary of Ireland’s partition.

There was an interesting example of role-reversal when Bertie Ahern interviewed Tommie Gorman, former RTÉ Northern Editor, about the latter’s life and career. The ex-Taoiseach was well-prepared and showed considerable skill at asking questions: Oprah Winfrey might have serious competition.

The school gives close attention to US politics and two of the sessions were devoted to the state of play on the American scene. What happens next after the Afghan debacle is a question on a lot of people’s minds, because actions or the lack of them on the part of the world’s leading superpower can have implications for us all.

The ousting of Donald Trump from the White House generated a sigh of relief in many quarters and this feeling was confirmed by the terrifying attack on the Capitol Building in the dying days of the Trump administration, which had the hallmarks of an attempted coup.

His successor comes across as quite a restrained individual on a personal level, but perhaps not over-endowed with charisma: the words famously used in the 1988 US vice-presidential debate by Democrat Lloyd Bentsen against Republican Dan Quayle might also be applied to Joe Biden: “You’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Since JFK was cut off in his prime by an assassin’s bullet only five months after visiting New Ross, we can’t say for sure (assuming he was elected to a second term in office) how he would have responded to the developing situation in Vietnam, which had similarities to later events in Afghanistan. On balance, his approach might not have been very different from that of Joe Biden.

Given the horrors of 9/11, it was inevitable that a full-on manhunt for the ruthless terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden would take place. A US Navy team ended his life on May 2 2011, although he was unarmed and Amnesty International said that, if he posed no immediate threat, he should have been brought to trial.

However, the continuing presence of US troops in Afghanistan seemed to be achieving little and it’s hard to disagree in broad terms with Biden’s decision to pull out, although one wishes it could have been done with fewer casualties and a greater number of at-risk Afghans enabled to leave the country.

Could we be on the verge of another period of isolationism whereby the US sought in the past to avoid getting involved in foreign disputes that could result in war? There are more than enough issues to be dealt with on the US domestic scene to keep a President busy.

On reflection, it was probably beneficial from Biden’s point of view to withdraw from Afghanistan before the looming 20th anniversary of 9/11. Had he waited, there might have been increased pressure to remain, in order to ensure that the group known as ISIS-K didn’t develop the capacity for something similar to what Al-Qaeda did at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The more you think about it, the impression grows that our own peace process was among the relatively few overseas activities in recent times where US involvement contributed to a broadly-successful outcome. So far anyway.