Benazir Bhutto and patriotism

Another martyr was created today when Benazir Bhutto was slain. Yet another wasted life. Yet another country possibly descending into riotous behaviour.

In my ignorance of Pakistani politics I hadn't realised that her father was hanged almost twenty years ago. She's lost two brothers, one in suspicious circumstances in France. And now another member of the family is gone. You have to wonder did she really think she could make a difference? Was she smart or stupid? Sounds crude, but if she'd succeeded in the elections in the spring, I'd say smart. Now, I'm not so sure. She was certainly brave and convinced of her path. I would have stayed in exile.

It is a funny thing, nationalism. This feeling of a loyalty to a country, to a peoples. It makes people the world over do crazy things. I do not understand it, but then I have never had fight for my vote. I've never had to queue for four miles in searing heat at a polling station in fear of my life. People in generations just gone by removed that fear for me.

I saw Ms. Bhutto interviewed earlier in the year when she returned from exile. The interviewer suggested that she was mad to come home. She said she missed the grass, the sky over head. She missed her country. The country that took three members of her family, I thought to myself.

I have no such sense of patriotism. It has caused such grief in Ireland that in many ways I abhor Irish patriotism. I hate when people stand up drunkenly at the end of a disco or a wedding and put their hands on their chests like it means something. Yet when Sonia O'Sullivan is racing I want her to win. When John O'Shea is going for a header I want him to score. What does this say about me?

I wonder about our country and our patriotism and what it really means today. I always thought it was a dirty word associated with thugs in the north killing innocent little kids in Canary Wharf. Now, I think maybe I was a little ignorant. Maybe there is something there to be proud of. I don't know really.

I know this; I often wonder about our neutrality. I thought it was great when I was a teenager. I hated the way the US stuck their nose into everybody's affairs. In fact, I still do. But I wonder about our neutrality and is it just an easy way out? Are we like the other kid in the yard at lunchtime who sees the bully hitting the smaller kid but just chooses to be afraid and not to assist the little kid? Who keeps their nose clean so as to get on in this world? Who ignores the violence in the house next door so as to protect their own family?