Haass: profound effect on foreign policy

As is often the case when people share defining moments, be it in life or history, the two men have been especially close friends since that awful day.

“My most vivid memory of that day is watching the television and watching this second plane fly into the towers,” Haass recalled last week from his State Department office in Washington. “It was one of those bonding moments where stressful times tend to make or break relationships.”

In this instance, it was a case of a firm friendship made.

“He was great. Just very natural. He was caring, concerned, horrified like everyone else,” Haass said of the taoiseach’s reaction to the attacks. “He and I were talking and watching TV. This is the kind of thing that is not in the diplomatic handbook.”

Haass, who has been tipped as a possible future U.S. secretary of state, said he first learned of the attack on the U.S. when a note was passed to him during a meeting telling him that there was an emergency and to telephone his office.

The recollection of watching the images of people hurtling themselves out of the World Trade Center towers on live TV still causes Haass to pause.

“I’ve probably had a half dozen meetings with the taoiseach since Sept. 11, but that was one of those times when I thought that here was someone who truly understood — who not just sympathized but empathized with what we were going

through,” Haass said. “Look, Ireland is one of the countries that as an American you feel comfortable in. Whatever the cultural differences, and differences in accent, there are powerful similarities.”

Following his meetings with Ahern and the Tanaiste Mary Harney, Haass decided to continue on with a scheduled visit to Belfast in the immediate hours after the attack on New York, the Pentagon and in the skies over Pennsylvania. Planes were grounded and there was no going back to Washington anyway.

Haass was struck by another irony after concluding meetings with various officials and political leaders in the North.

“Here I was in the city of Belfast, a city that conjured up images of bombs and terrorism for many Americans,” he said. “If you had done one of those word associations with a lot of Americans, if you had said Belfast five years ago, they would have said ‘bombs.’ And I was in a city that was for the moment demonstrably safer than the city I live and work in. There will always be terrorists.

“But if one had to be in a foreign country on that particular day, Ireland was one of the better places to be.”

The 9/11 attack will have a profound effect on U.S. foreign policy for years to come. And the North peace process, according to Haass, is not immune to the fallout.

“U.S. policy toward terrorism has changed because the way the U.S. views terrorism post-9/11 has changed, Haass noted. “Because up to Sept. 11, terrorism had been something of a low-level problem — almost more of a nuisance than a major strategic threat.”

Now, he indicated, there’s a zero-tolerance policy that extends to all including Irish Americans who may have been inclined in the past to pass the hat on behalf of Irish republican groups associated with violence.

“In the past a lot of people had looked the other way on violence or terrorism, rationalized it as a necessary means for a desirable ends no matter how unfortunate,” Haass said of some Irish Americans. “Those days are over. To the extent they existed, they ended Sept. 11.”

Echoing previous statements he has made on the matter of the alleged

IRA aid to the FARC forces in Colombia, Haass stated: “The president has been quite clear. It mattered less what people had done before Sept. 11 than what they did after Sept. 11.”

Last Friday, the U.S. State Department announced the launch of an interactive electronic journal available over the internet that catalogues the reactions over the last year to the Sept. 11 attacks.

As if to reinforce the Haass doctrine that terrorism is terrorism no matter where it rears up, a section on the website includes an extensive discourse on the Omagh bombing.