It’s been vicious out there since we last spoke. There has been murder on the streets of Limerick, with the Garda Emergency Response Unit being called in to police areas of the city that are riven with brutal inter-gang violence.

For those unfamiliar with the niceties of the drugs trade in Limerick, it was a shocking development, reflecting a descent into barbarism that, from the outside, seems almost impossible to fathom. But that’s the way with turf wars among a certain class of criminal. It is a question of being more ruthless than the opposition – and once the mayhem starts, it’s like a bushfire in Australia.

Look at what’s been going on in Belfast. An internal UDA feud has been simmering there for months, resulting in the assassination of a number of key loyalist figures. The latest victims were the south-east Antrim Brigadier John Gregg, and his friend Robert Carson, who were murdered on the way back to Belfast from a Glasgow Rangers football match.

The murders have been blamed on the Loyalist faction associated with the imprisoned former Lower Shankill UDA leader, Johnny Adair. Following the funerals of Carson and Gregg, it has emerged that up to 20 members of the Adair faction have fled to Scotland, where they are currently on the run. The UDA, meanwhile, has vowed to track them down, and to murder at least five of them.

A story to this effect in the Irish Times, earlier this week, ran just below another one on the seizure of about 300,000 Ecstasy tablets by the PSNI. The ecstasy was being smuggled into the North from Stranraer, and the police have confirmed that they believe that Loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the operation.

Meanwhile, we are told that Adair and his closest political associate John White – who is among those on the run, according to reports – have decided to ‘retire’ from any involvement with Loyalism. If they do, those who are currently out to kill Adair and his associates will remain in control of the streets of loyalist Belfast. Now there’s a pleasant prospect.

All of this seems like small beer, however, when you look at what the self-styled policeman of the world – the US government – is embarked upon. Over the past two weeks, the build-up to war on Iraq has continued with a chilling relentlessness. It is gruesomely obvious by now that this is not about UN Resolutions, and Saddam Hussein’s failure to comply with them. Nor is it about weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation – it is about what the US considers to be its strategic interests in the Middle East, and specifically about the oil that Iraq has and which the US oil barons covet.

Michael D.Higgins deals with this issue in great depth elsewhere in the magazine: his views are on page 10 and I urge you to read what he has to say.

The point, however, is that it is wrong to think that there is nothing we can do. All hope has not yet evaporated, that the people of Iraq might be spared the devastation, destruction and death that will be the inevitable outcome of war. While that is the case, anything constructive that we can do to support the objective of preventing what would be a catastrophic eventuality for Iraqis is worth doing.

There is little doubt that a decision has been made in Washington that the U.S. will go to war, and so – for a number of reasons – the stakes have seldom been higher since the conclusion of World War 2.

There is a strong and growing mood of dissent in the United States itself. This will hardly be enough to rein in the belligerence of George W. Bush’s cohorts. But combined with other developments, it may force the administration to consider what the likely long-term political fall-out will be.

Self-interest is what is relevant here: if they were convinced that going to war might make a return to office impossible, it might put a halt to their gallop. Then again it might not: there is a feeling that they may just be reckless and greedy enough to want it all, and to want it now.
Being in a position to go for broke they may just do it – and damn the consequences.

As we go to press, there is increasing opposition to the war option from France, Germany and Russia. Between them, these three countries may at least successfully delay the seemingly inevitable, allowing more time for opposition within the US to organise. And what if these three powers remain firm in their resolve and the US decides to proceed regardless? What will be the effect of that, on diplomatic relations between the major powers?

And is it certain that none of these States will present a more tangible obstacle, which the U.S. will have to either negotiate its way around, or seek to demolish? World War 3 may not be on the way – but we are on the brink of events that will pose, indeed that already pose, a terrible risk to world peace and stability.

Whatever way you hold the possibilities up to the light, they are alarming. And they are, for one reason in particular: I hesitate to say it, but fuck it, there’s no point in being stupidly coy here. The sad fact is that there is a moron in the White House and he is surrounded by a sinister cabal of power-mongers, who probably care as little for the American people as they do for the Iraqis.

Of course, there is a possibility, if the US proceeds, that the fighting will all be over in a fortnight. But the greater likelihood is that the Iraqis will dig in; that they will use the civilian population as cover; and that they will take a lot of innocents with them if and when they finally go down.

So this is what it’s coming to. If it was bad out there over the past fortnight, the fear is that it is about to get a whole lot worse.

Sorry I can’t be a bit more cheerful.