Irish Right About Bush

LETTER writer John Rogers (September 27-October 3) says that the reason the Irish people have such a negative view of President George W. Bush is that they are brainwashed by the liberal Irish media, Irish academia and Irish politicians.

May I suggest that it might be Mr. Rogers who is the one being brainwashed, in this case by the right-wing corporate media in America (from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Michael Savage –- ad nauseam!).

Further, I would remind Mr. Rogers that it was Pope John Paul II —hardly a left-winger — who called the unprovoked invasion and occupation and occupation of Iraq “illegal,” “immoral” and “a crime against humanity.”

I believe legitimate dissent is always patriotic and, therefore, I believe Senator Russell D. Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat, is doing his job responsibly in calling for censure of our law-breaking president.

George W. Bush has been doing his job incompetently, and the Irish people are intelligent enough to see it. We have an administration that started a war based on lies; detained and tortured prisoners of war, ignoring the Geneva Conventions; insulted our allies and energized our enemies; racked up the most astronomical budget deficits in our nation’s history; illegally spied on its own citizens; and is now threatening to invade Iran, which could possibly lead to World War III.

The 9/11 attacks happened on President Bush’s watch. Bush invaded Afghanistan supposedly to get rid of al-Qaeda and capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Bush failed because he and his cohorts of the Greedy Oil Party decided to take Iraq’s oil instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan.

The results? According to the British medical journal The Lancet, more than 150,000 Iraqis dead and hundreds of thousands more injured, more than 2,700 of our own dead and more than 60,000 injured, hundreds of millions of people newly turned against us, and hundreds of billions of dollars of our national wealth gone.

Thankfully, America is not completely indifferent to what is being done in our name, as any poll worth its salt shows. However, our government, from the Supreme Court on down, is no longer accountable to us.

We are ruled by a military-industrial greed machine. Those waging war — the defense contractors President Eisenhower warned us about in his January 1961 farewell address — are filling their pockets. Short of a revolution, there is little the morally outraged can do. Those who pretend that killing is not murder aren’t the ones pulling the triggers — they are the ones reaping the dollars.

We are not represented in Congress, except for a few brave senators such as Feingold. His courageous call for censure of President Bush and his corrupt administration is the highest form of patriotism.

James V. Burke
Sayreville, New Jersey

Take the Test

IN the proud history of Irish American service in the Fire Department of New York, I would just like to remind readers of the upcoming firefighter entrance exam.

The deadline to file for the January 20, 2007 test is October 13. Applications and information can be found at www.nyc.gov/dcas. or by calling 311 (in New York City).

Over 100 years of Irish American dedication has made the FDNY what it is today. Let’s keep it going.

Michael McCrory
Bayside, New York

Don’t Change the Tay

WHENEVER I find occasion to think back on my childhood, somehow the cup of “tay” seems to take precedence over everything else.

I still love my cup of tay and, to tell you the truth, there’s not a thing that I can write if I don’t have a cup of “tay” sitting right next to me.

My mother and my uncle Jackie Ryan, my mother’s only brother, were tay drinkers, and my mother would always say, “So’r if we had nothing else but the cup of tay that’d be fine.”

My brothers Derek and Phil could drink tay until it spilt out their ears, and there was not a mug made big enough for them, so they drink their tea out of big plastic jugs. Phil takes no sugar and very little milk, and Derek drinks his tay so sweet he’d be better off pouring it into the sugar bowl, but of course the sugar bowl isn’t big enough for him.

I used to love the spoon of sugar in my tay but about eight years ago, when I found that I had nothing else to give up for Lent, I forfeited my spoon of sugar to the holy cause. I don’t drink and my smoking went by the wayside one other Lent, so the only little pleasure that I have now is my beloved cup of tay and I am not giving that up for any cause, holy or unholy.

My childhood was dormant for the most part. Ireland in the 1960s was much the same Ireland that was there in the 1940s. De Valera was adamant that Ireland never change, and if I was old enough then and I knew then what I know now, I would be jumping on de Valera’s bandwagon, and hell or high horses wouldn’t drag me away from there.

There are always great visionaries with great dreams, and great dreams inevitably bring about great changes, no matter how resilient the resistance waged against them.

Sean Lemass saw a new Ireland rise out of his dreams and he rallied the youth of Ireland to his great awakening. The importance of education was the flagship of his cause, and he hurled his rendition deep into the hearts of almost every man, woman and child throughout the breadth and width of Ireland.

I don’t know if Sean Lemass was a tay, drinker and I am not sure of how great a visionary he was, but surely he could never have seen an Ireland so far flung from the Ireland that I now find my dreams going to at night.

I haven’t been back home in over six years, and the last time I was there I could still find traces of what it was, that de Valera wanted so much, to hold onto.

Part of me wants so badly to believe that this new Ireland is indeed the great achievement of modern times, and I want to feel proud of those who brought this about. I am, though, your ever loving traditionalist and it scares me to think that one day, everything that is Ireland to me will no longer exist.

Change is a good thing and sometimes the best of things, but there are some things that should never change. It is great indeed that there is now an Ireland for everyone’s taste, but my Ireland is something that I hope I will always be able to return to, including the cup of tay and the wonderful tradition of fireside stories.

Pat Greene
Brooklyn, New York

Senators Are Bozos

IT should be noted that all major media outlets have shamefully ignored the recent approval of an egregious and un-American treaty, unanimously passed by our illustrious Senate in Washington, D.C.

Why egregious and un-American? Because this extradition treaty with England will allow a British individual to anonymously allege a crime against any U.S. citizen, where after that American can be held for 60 days, with the probability of being transported to England for trial, imprisonment and forfeiture of all possessions.

This abominable treaty allows for no statute of limitations, suspends one’s right to a writ of habeas corpus and, in effect, deprives any targeted American of his/her constitutional rights.

In spite of the massive sacrifices endured over the generations to retain a democratic republic and personal freedoms, our “patriotic” senators have chosen the interests of a foreign power over the protection of their American constituents’ basic rights.

In my opinion, each and every one of these bozos in D.C. are beneath contempt.

Joseph T. Dillon
Dorchester, Massachusetts