O’Toole Versus Dunphy

By AM Thursday, September 22, 2011

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Earlier today I listened to what was supposed to be a debate between Fintan O’Toole and Eamon Dunphy on Newstalk. It focused on Martin McGuinness’s bid to become the next Irish president. Throughout it sounded like a match without any referee. Well it had a referee, Damien Kiberd, but he played rather than officiated. He, it seemed, had picked his side in advance, then proceeded to blow the whistle to thwart the other side rather than facilitate play. Consequently it was the type of debate that pitched Fintan O’Toole on one side against Eamon Dunphy and the presenter on the other. Kiberd, a former columnist with the Sinn Fein linked Daily Ireland, went about his business as if he had never left the paper. Dunphy cannot be blamed for that and to his credit he tried to maintain a civilised tone throughout but the format did not lend itself to an even handed discussion. 

Earlier in the week O’Toole had penned a strong column in the Irish Times which suggested Martin McGuinness was unfit for the presidency as he bore culpability for war crimes and in principle was liable for arrest.  Dunphy described the column as ‘outrageous’ and came on Newstalk the day after to take O’Toole to task. Such were the sparks generated by the issue that both men were then invited on this afternoon to slog it out.

The chair immediately set the tone by asking O’Toole why he was picking on Martin McGuinness when there were so many political leaders all over the world who had very dodgy pasts. Throughout, despite requests from O’Toole for chair neutrality, the skewed line of questioning continued. Outside of a debate between two sides, and where the interviewer was engaged in one-on-one with his guest, it would have been a fair enough stance to take. But as part of a debate between two studio guests, it was gratuitous partisanship. 

I tried to follow the competing claims without specifically allowing my view of McGuinness or Sinn Fein to colour either the content or the outcome. The issues promised to have a standalone value, much of which would have been missed if refracted through the prism of McGuinness.  Of the two parties engaged O’Toole’s position was the more consistent. While Dunphy made very valid points about the war crimes committed by the British state and many other governments across the globe he appeared bereft of a substantial case against the consistent moral tone of O’Toole which refused to veer from the principle of human rights that must by both necessity and definition apply to all human beings rather than just some. 

One very telling point the Irish Times columnist made was that nobody he had debated with thus far had disputed that the IRA had consistently commissioned and engaged in war crimes. Nor was it challenged today. At best, the response O’Toole got from both Dunphy and Kiberd was that all sides engaged in nefarious and nasty acts they often later came to regret. 

This obviously makes for uncomfortable listening for those of us who were in the IRA and who have been reluctant to confront the possibility that it was not just the armed opponents of republicanism who had a monopoly on war crimes. Yet it is impossible to sustain the notion that the Argentine military, when it disappeared people, was guilty of war crimes but the IRA when doing likewise was somehow behaving justly. That conclusion could not be arrived at without first undergoing a torturous Orwellian process of self deception. There is simply no moral difference between the architect of the disappeared in Buenos Aires and his counterpart in Belfast.

Each time Dunphy probed O’Toole for consistency the latter rose to the challenge, agreeing with his interlocutor that Blair, Bush, Cheney and many leaders of the Israeli state should also face charges in relation to war crimes. In doing so he effectively scuppered the allegation that he was being selective in expressing concerns about Martin McGuinness. Try as he did Dunphy was unable to assail the logic of O’Toole on the general issue of war crimes. Nor could he sustain his claim that O’Toole selectively applied his critique. The Irish Times columnist upended this charge by expressing support for Sinn Fein’s demands for truth in respect of British atrocities such as the Ballymurphy massacre while brushing aside the party’s insistence on settling for only half the truth.

I have long liked Dunphy and always found him an aggressive but fair interviewer, having been on the receiving end of his probing on quite a few occasions. But this time round he seemed to have a scatter gun approach hoping to score a hit more by chance than good aim. This contrasted sharply with O’Toole’s methodical zeroing in on the issues. I found myself in agreement with O’Toole that Dunphy too frequently set up a caricature purpose built for easy deconstruction. Time and again O’Toole brushed aside the caricature forcing Dunphy to deal with the real man rather than the straw one.

An example of Dunphy’s rootless approach came via a claim to have almost singlehandedly opposed the IRA campaign in the Southern media. That was never my memory of the state of play. Dunphy, apparently realising that he had overstretched himself, later modified his position to include his former colleagues in the Sunday Independent. But this was to ignore RTE which vigorously censored the remotest allusion to sympathy with the IRA.

Dunphy rightly emphasized the point that ultimately the people rather than the columnists will decide on the next resident of the Aras. This is true although falling back on the democratic imperative failed to answer the moral issues raised by O’Toole.

Faced with the remorseless consistency inherent in O’Toole’s argument Dunphy took to defending the notion of lying in public life, maintaining that people who don’t like it should grow up. How that is meant to be a blueprint  for clarity and public understanding escapes me. All it will produce is a situation where liars complain about other liars lying and it is all okay.

Is O’Toole through his human rights discourse setting the bar too high? Is it implausible to exclude war criminals from public office? It may well be. But if it is then it should be because they tip toe past justice rather than justice tip toeing past them. The logic of the argument presented by Dunphy and Kiberd is that because one war criminal is allowed into office they all should be. The implications of this are unthinkable: Henry Kissinger and Theoneste Bagosora holding high office, and legitimately so, after their crimes against humanity, must seem anathema to the sworn opponents of repression and injustice. With such a warped moral compass guiding it, human society would go neither North nor South, East nor West, merely down.

The decision by Martin McGuinness to contest the presidency, as is his right, has moved political discourse out of its familiar orbit and into new territory.  In recent years the Derry man found himself dealing with charges that he had a strong IRA CV. Now that has moved to a new level and he now finds himself at the centre of a debate about whether or not he is a war criminal. If the President of Ireland is meant to be a non controversial figure that assumption is now being vigorously put to the test.

Although anchored in the current presidential campaign this was a discussion where ethics confronted realpolitik, a battleground on which analysis went to war with polemic.  I admire both Fintan O’Toole and Eamon Dunphy for coming head to head on the issue and leaving society better informed. It is regrettable that they were let down by the tendentious orientation of the chair.