President McAleese at Great War commerations

The attendance of President Mary McAleese at the Peace Park in Messines, Flanders, marking the deaths of Irishmen in the Great War is further proof of the political ecumenism developing in Ireland and is to be welcomed.  

The attendance of President Mary McAleese at the Peace Park in Messines, Flanders, marking the deaths of Irishmen in the Great War is further proof of the political ecumenism developing in Ireland and is to be welcomed. 

However, I take issue with the presence of members of the Irish Defences Forces at the ceremony.  Irish Defence Forces should not participate at official level in Remembrance ceremonies in conjunction with the Royal British Legion or members of the British Army, other than on the National Day of Commemoration which takes place here in Ireland on the first Sunday in July each year.  This will ensure at least that protocol and ceremonial are controlled by the Sovereign Irish State and not by those opposed to Irish separatist nationhood.
 
The presence of Irish soldiers at Remembrance events could be interpreted as a retrospective endorsement of the leader of the Irish Party John Redmond's pledge of the young men of Ireland to Britain's war effort in 1914.  35,000 Irishmen died in the Great War holocaust.   
 
Hardly a family in Ireland was left untouched by the tragic enormity of young lives lost during the Great War.  It is therefore entirely proper and perhaps long overdue that appropriate public ceremonies be held to commemorate the many thousands who went away and never returned.   What is not acceptable, however, and should not be tolerated, is the efforts at conferring a new respectability upon the British Army under the guise of honouring the war dead. 
 
These young men were lied to and betrayed.  Home Rule for Ireland was first promised but then suspended.  Furthermore, John Redmond, had told them that the war was "a just war... undertaken in defence of small nations and oppressed peoples."  Redmond was referring to Belgium, but Roger Casement and others had exposed the real Belgium; a ruthless colonial power that practised genocide and slavery in Africa.  Young Irishmen fought and died for freedoms that were being denied to their own land.  They died in an inter-imperialist conflict.  The sacrifice of these poor men was used for years as an emotional and dishonest basis for neo-colonial propaganda by those who resented the emergence of an independent Irish nation.  While many families in Ireland treasured photographs of their Somme dead on their walls, men in British Army uniforms were kicking in their front doors as they ruthlessly suppressed the Easter rebellion. 
 
I take the view that those Irish who died in the Great War should be commemorated with dignity and respect at the National Day of Commemoration.  However, the Irish State should resist demands to fully and unconditionally participate at official level in Remembrance Day ceremonies.  These ceremonies would expect Irish military personnel to conform to the pomp and pageant of the British imperial military ethos.  The Irish State should not allow itself to be made look like some sort of devolved British colonial administration. 
 
The primary allegiance of the Irish State must be to those who established the State, not to those who tried to prevent it.