| Some time ago while visiting a US client I noticed a poster on her wall. It depicted a frog leaping from a large water lily leaf in anticipation of reaching another. The target leaf, however, was moving rapidly away from the frog’s expected landing point, and the frog’s expression spoke of imminent disaster. The caption read: "Just when I thought I could make ends meet somebody moved the ends." I am Kermit. The Ireland I left barely exists anymore, except in my mind. This is not a bad thing. The America I arrived in no longer exists either. Ireland is dealing with a new US and the US is engaging Eire Nua. Ireland, blessed with success after a very long wait, changes by the day. I delight in Ireland’s success, now well-established. One of the important contributing elements in this Irish success story is the advantage taken by the Irish of their historical US ties and their European Community context. The major example of this US-Ireland-Europe axis of interdependence is the fact that Ireland is the second largest exporter of software in the world by virtue of its re-exporting of US software to Europe. The US has changed profoundly, too, following the savage slaughter of 2500 of its citizens on the now infamous date of 9-11. After 9-11, the US focused on national defense almost as if a switch was thrown. America knows in its gut that this irregular war against terror could last 100 years - with US civilians as the primary target. In its defense calculus, the US has evaluated anew its friends, its enemies and the perennially lukewarm. Americans forget easily, forgive easily, have a tendency to help enemies (Germany, France and Russia for example), but this murder of New Yorkers, from every nation on earth, has placed a set in the American jaw I have never seen before. These realpolitik calculations bid fair to be a permanent element in American foreign policy. Analysis done, the US set about correcting the international abuses that led to as many people dying violently in one hour in New York as died violently in Northern Ireland in 25 years! And look at the results. Afghan freed in months. Not Alexander the Great, the might of the British Empire or the modern Russian army, after ten bloody years of intense modern warfare, could accomplish this feat. America then freed 25 million Iraqis from a home grown murderous tyrant in six weeks. Would that there were "today’s America" when Ireland needed freeing from a tyrant over the 700 years of our despotic experience. Wolfe Tone begged the French. They halfheartedly helped us and then they went home, mission decidedly unaccomplished. Then we begged the Germans for help and got a pitifully small arms supply in that U-boat caper off the Southern Irish coast. The Germans literally left with the turn of the tide, their mission for Irish freedom kaput and never to be repeated. Some weeks ago on US national television, the countries who helped and who wished to be known as having helped in the US war on Iraq were listed. There were thirty countries in all. Many were from Eastern Europe where they know a thing or two about tyranny. France's insufferability came to the fore, unsurprisingly, when M. Chirac asked these recently freed peoples to "shut up" when they spoke, as one, for freedom. The French, Germans, and Russians opposed the war against Iraq for reasons best known to them. I know that Ireland helped in America’s defense by allowing Shannon's use as an Allied refueling node. I scanned the countries listed by America as friends. Ireland was not there. It appears we helped but did not want it to be known that we helped. Can this be? Are we so Europeanized that we have forgotten our greatest friends in history in their most perilous hour? We Irish have a preternatural sense of freedom inculcated in us through centuries of freedom’s absence. US President John Adams in the early years of America’s expansion of freedom said that if America wanted to know what tyranny meant she only had to look at the plight of the Irish people. The Irish and the Americans are the most natural allies in the world. It is essential that we Irish defend America's liberty as fiercely as we defend our own. Let us help the US by defending her in the political chambers of Europe or on the honored field of battle whatever the cost. Freedom isn' free. Who knows that better than the Irish? America was the great and visible friend of Ireland during the years of our Great Hunger. For a century and a half thereafter America absorbed the “huddled masses” from Ireland’s “teeming shores”. The US was our invisible and decisive defense through the Second World War and then the Cold War. We owe her big. Or at least the benefit of the doubt if we must be pusillanimous. Nua Eabhrac Abu. Thomas A. Cahill © | 
