(by Suzanne Breen, Fortnight)

A year on from September 11th, Ireland is meant to join the rest of the world in voicing our opposition to terrorism. Such sentiments are expected to unite North and South, nationalist and unionist. Solidarity banners with the US were on display at Drumcree. Gerry Adams has called for those responsible for '9/11' to be brought to justice. Anyone challenging the crusade risks being branded a fellow-traveller of terrorism.

Yet any objective analysis of Irish and international politics shows there is no moral basis to the campaign. It's a purely political project. We are expected to mourn the 3,000 people who died on September 11th but who even remembers that more than almost six times that number - 17,500 men, women and children - were killed in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon? The only real terrorist victims are our victims - those who share our skin colour and social/cultural background and live in states with which our governments are friendly.

We are meant to direct our anger at Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, head of the world's most dangerous 'terrorist' state. Except to much of the non-Western world, Iraq isn't the most dangerous 'terrorist' state - that accolade belongs to the USA. It's George Bush and his predecessors who have presented the greatest threat to their lives.

It was the US which killed and maimed wedding guests in Afghan villages. It was the US which bombed the only pharmaceutical plant in Sudan producing vaccines against killer diseases. It is the US which props up despotic regimes like Saudia Arabia. It is the US which bankrolls Israel and thus permits the killing of Palestinian children. It is the US which trained and funded 'terrorists' in Nicaragua and which attempted in May to remove the democratically elected president of Venezuela.

Our governments tell us terrorism is the indiscriminate use of violence and its victims are usually non-combatants. If so, the British firebombing of German cities during the Second World War and the bombardment of Cambodia during the Vietnam conflict were terrorism. Bomber Harris and Henry Kissinger were terrorists. The Collins dictionary's definition of terrorism as "the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal", fits the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima.

Ariel Sharon authorises the bombing of a building in Gaza, full of civilians, in order to kill a Hamas leader. That is self-defence. The Provo bombing of a Shankill fish shop, in order to kill UDA leaders, is 'terrorism'. The loyalist petrol bombing which killed young brothers Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn, in Ballymoney is terrorism. The deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of US sanctions is not.

Terrorism is a meaningless term used only for propaganda. "Terrorism no longer means terrorism," says Robert Fisk. "It's not a definition, it's a political contrivance. 'Terrorists' are those who use violence against the side that is using the word." The veteran war journalist was given a hero's welcome at this summer's West Belfast festival but Sinn Fein evidently doesn't share his caution about 'terrorism'.

At his party's ard fheis, Gerry Adams, referring to September 11th, branded terrorism "ethically indefensible". Gerry Kelly, who planted car bombs in London injuring almost 200 people, has voiced abhorrence at the civilian casualties of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The Provo stance isn't due to a road-to-Damascus conversion. It's dictated purely by their new, more mainstream political positions and desire for respectability.

So they condemn the Real IRA bombing which killed David Caldwell, a civilian employee in a British Army base, although not so long ago they strapped civilian canteen worker, Patsy Gillespie, into a van laden with explosives and made him drive to Coshquin checkpoint where it blew up five soldiers and the father-of-five.

The White House works with terrorists and terrorist states - bin Laden in his mujahedin days and Saddam during the war with Iran - when it suits its strategic purposes. It entertains Provo leaders at official receptions but wants bin Laden, who remains uncompromisingly opposed to its interests, in a wooden box. Downing Street treats the Provos and the UVF, who still practise terror but don't threaten its political agenda, very differently to how it treats the Real IRA and the LVF.

This whole 'terrorism' business is a charade and always has been. In 'City of God', Saint Augustine tells of an encounter between Alexander the Great and a pirate he captured on the high seas. "How dare you molest the seas as a pirate!" Alexander declares. "How dare you molest the whole world," retorts the pirate. "I have a small boat so I am called a thief and a pirate. You have a great navy, so you are called an emperor and can call other men pirates."

This article appeared in the September issue of Fortnight magazine.

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