We're watching the slow-motion death of Irish neutrality

At 9:39pm on Tuesday, May 20th, while most of Ireland was settling down to the evening news, a Gulfstream jet touched down at Shannon carrying eight men who had become inconvenient to America. The plane sat on the tarmac for precisely two hours and eight minutes - long enough to refuel, not long enough to ask awkward questions - before lifting off again into the Atlantic darkness, bound for Djibouti and points unknown. The men aboard, described by US officials with characteristic delicacy as "barbaric" and "violent," were being shipped to South Sudan in direct violation of a federal court order. Ireland's contribution to this judicial farce? We checked their fuel receipts and waved them through.

The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed the plane was a civilian aircraft and "as such, no diplomatic clearance would have been sought or would have been required". Nothing to see here, move along. Just another Tuesday night at Ireland's most morally compromised airport, where the only thing cheaper than the duty-free cigarettes is our collective conscience.

The deportees were from Vietnam, Cuba, Myanmar, Laos, and Mexico. Eight men whose final destination was South Sudan, that beacon of human rights and prosperity. One imagines the conversation at immigration.

"Destination?" 

"Well, we're not entirely sure, but somewhere suitably horrible will do."

What makes this particularly galling is the casual manner in which we've allowed Shannon to become America's most convenient moral laundrette. As of November 2008, approximately 1.2 million troops had passed through Shannon since the beginning of the Iraq War. Recent figures show more than 220,000 US soldiers have travelled through Shannon Airport over the last three and a half years. We've been so busy counting the landing fees that we've forgotten to count the cost to our souls.

Shannon's transformation from an innocent refuelling stop to a military transit hub reads like a parable of modern Ireland's moral flexibility. What began as a sensible arrangement - letting planes stop for fuel - has evolved into something far more insidious. Shannon was used on at least 33 occasions by United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) flights, thought to be part of a US policy called 'extraordinary rendition'. We've become the Pontius Pilate of international airports: we didn't order the crucifixion; we just provided the nails.

The legal fig leaf we've wrapped around this arrangement is the 1944 Chicago Convention, which permits non-scheduled flights to make stops for non-traffic purposes. It's rather like claiming you're not involved in a bank robbery because you only drove the getaway car for the petrol money.

Article 5 of this convention provides for the right of air operators of contracting parties to operate non-scheduled overflights and stops for non-traffic purposes (e.g. refuelling). How wonderfully convenient that international law provides such neat loopholes for the morally squeamish.

The Americans, meanwhile, display their customary flair for bureaucratic doublespeak. When a federal judge explicitly ordered US Homeland Security to turn planes around, they responded by invoking what might be called the Pontius Pilate defence.

"It is absolutely absurd for a district judge to try and dictate the foreign policy and national security of the United States of America," declared one official. 

Translation: courts are for little people.

Our Tánaiste, Simon Harris, achieved that peculiarly Irish combination of moral indignation and bureaucratic helplessness. 

"I want to get legal clarity in relation to this before speaking with great certainty because of the seriousness of the matter," he said, presumably while his officials frantically leafed through international law textbooks looking for something that might help them sleep at night.

The deeper question is what this says about Ireland's much-vaunted neutrality. We've spent decades congratulating ourselves on our moral purity while simultaneously allowing our territory to be used as a staging post for American military adventures. A 2016 RedC poll indicated that 55% of Irish adults believe the US military should not be allowed to use Shannon Airport. Yet here we are, still playing host to whatever dark business America conducts in our name.

The Shannon controversy illuminates a broader truth about modern Ireland: we've learned to compartmentalise our conscience with remarkable efficiency. We condemn American foreign policy while providing the infrastructure to enable it. We deplore human rights abuses while offering our airports as convenient stopovers for the perpetrators. We've mastered the art of moral disapproval without the inconvenience of moral action.

The scene at Shannon has developed its own peculiar choreography: protesters with hand-painted signs facing off against aircraft worth more than the GDP of several small nations while gardaí stand between them like referees at a particularly polite boxing match. The officers know perfectly well what's parked behind them - it's rather hard to mistake a US Navy Hercules for a Ryanair budget flight - but they're paid to maintain the fiction that this is all perfectly ordinary civil aviation business. Everyone knows what's really going on, but we've all agreed to pretend otherwise - like dinner guests studiously ignoring the elephant in the drawing room.

Perhaps the most damning aspect of this entire affair is our collective shrug of indifference, we've become so accustomed to Shannon's dual role as a commercial airport and American military convenience store that we barely register the moral schizophrenia anymore. The Irish Government must now take action to end US military use of Shannon airport immediately, and this must be on a permanent basis, demand the activists. But Irish governments don't do moral clarity whilst oiling USA/Ireland political and diplomatic ties.

What we're witnessing is the slow-motion assassination of Irish neutrality, death by a thousand compromises. Each individual decision seems reasonable in isolation - after all, it's just fuel, just a stopover, just following international law. But collectively they add up to something far more sinister: the transformation of Ireland from a neutral observer to a willing accomplice.

The deportation flight that stopped at Shannon this May is merely the latest symptom of a deeper disease. We've allowed ourselves to become America's favourite people-laundering operation while denying moral complicity. We provide the infrastructure; they offer plausible deniability. Everyone wins, except perhaps the eight men currently discovering the joys of South Sudanese hospitality.

The real tragedy is that we've done all this while maintaining the fiction that we're somehow different, somehow better. We're the good guys, you see, because we don't start wars - we just provide the petrol for the people who do. 

Perhaps it's time to abandon the pretence entirely and embrace our role as America's most obliging European errand boy. We could rebrand Shannon as 'Forward Operating Base Clare' and install proper military insignia above the control tower - at least then, visiting dignitaries wouldn't have to endure the charade of diplomatic niceties. We might even offer themed packages: 'Extraordinary Rendition with a View of the Shannon Estuary!' 

Our neutrality has been reduced to little more than a comfortable fiction, like claiming the wedding reception is "dry" while serving champagne from teacups.

Until then, we'll continue this elaborate dance of moral evasion, wrapping ourselves in the warm blanket of international law while eight deported men discover what American justice looks like when it's outsourced to the highest bidder. 

Shannon Airport: Come for the duty-free; stay for the plausible deniability.