I think its been seeping away slowly but surely. What I found alarming was the prospect that shannon airport was been used to transport "terror" suspects from one country to another for torture.
Never were neutral. As Redegale said this rendition flights really do cause concern, For some strange reason we are doing nearly the same as England and licking the ass of Dubya Bush....................
Well, Joe. Thank you for asking. I believe we are no longer neutral but I dont believe neutrality is relevant in modern times. The IDF are currently on EU operated missions under UN mandates. I see this as peace enforcement as opposed to peace keeping.
As long as we are part of the EU we cannot be nutral, you're either in the club or you're not. Even the UN peacekeeping we do can be construed as millitary as if you carry guns you are an armed force as far as im concerned, everything else is symantecs. You also cannot claim to be nutral if you let Jets of hostile countries and by that I mean the US refuel in your country never mind the rendition flights being allowed re-fuel here.
with regards to US planes in shannon i came accross this a few months ago.......no mention of it in the irish press though as you can imagine but i found it funny The lads are caught again CIA plane #N987SA flew to Guantanamo Bay and also Shannon and Dublin several times in 2002-3: N987SA 10.10.2002 from Farmingdale, NY to Shannon N987SA 20.10.2002 from Firenze, Italy to Shannon N987SA 20.10.2002 from Shannon to Gander, NF N987SA 14.07.2003 from Annecy, France to Shannon N987SA 17.07.2003 from Edinburgh, UK to Dublin N987SA 19.07.2003 from Dublin to Manston, UK Its only gone and crashed in mexico last september with eh 3.6 tons of cocaine http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20070924-0 here is a summary of it http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/12/19210/608/933/420107
its a pretty open secret that the government of the time were very sympathetic to the allies in the second world war.okay it was the lesser of two evils but its still not strictly neutral.ive heard tales of uk airmen crash landing and magically evading capture and getting into the north when the germans were interred in the curragh. at the moment how could we consider ourselves neutral when the government use the nod and wink approach at shannon with the usa.though on the other side of it the flights do create a lot of jobs down there
A friend of mine is peace keeping in Kosovo. He carries weapons regularly. For me you can't be neutral if you have soldiers carrying weapons on the streets of other Nations.
That's an interesting story stamullenredmen. It reminds me of a WW2 story I was told about. One night German bomber planes passed over Dublin on route to Belfast. The Dublin lads knew well what was going on. They sent a warning to Belfast and a blackout was planned before the German's arrival. A few buildings in Belfast were still destroyed that night but the potential size of damage was reduced. In the aftermath, a few fire brigades from south of the border helped put out the fires. Irish neutrality is hard to weigh up. Any decision by government is often heavily tied up with the likely global trade aftermath (i.e Shannon airport as a stopover to Americans heading to Iraq). If Irish soliders are on foreign soil it's hard to describe as neutrality, even if they're sympathisers with the plight of those nations. They may be morally right in providing aid to victims living under a dictatorship, but it's still in opposition to the local government. As Fowler said they're also carrying weaponry. Is it a political statement that affects neutrality, simply humanitarian or can it be both? The lack of football is making me think too much
Irish people just aren't good at being neutral. If Afghanistan were playing the Solomon Islands in synchronised knitting, we'd have to pick a side.
The correct answer to the question is that it is impossible to be neutral in today's world. A neutral country would have to have no trade, identity or national traits.