Launch of "Remembering Gallipoli, President McAleese’s Great War Crusade” By Dr. Pat Walsh

national | anti-war / imperialism | event notice Thursday March 11, 2010 16:05 by Jack Lane - ATHOL BOOKS

BOOK LAUNCH

As part of the project to reconcile Protestant Ulster to Catholic Ireland President McAleese goes to Gallipoli to honour the invaders of Turkey in the Great War. These Irishmen died in pursuit of British Imperial aims in the Middle East and the expansion of the Empire across Moslem lands. Dr Pat Walsh argues that, no matter how laudable an aim, we should not attempt to unite our divided land through a process which celebrates the conquest of other lands, the deaths and destruction of other citizens, and glorifies militarism in a way that gives it encouragement today. Dr Walsh does this by examining the real reasons for the war on Turkey that led Irishmen to their deaths at Gallipoli, the propagandist and racist view of the Moslem world that came out of that war, and the tragic and catastrophic consequences of it that persist to this day in the regions that were added to the British Empire through it - Iraq and Palestine included.

All welcome