The real relationship between Ireland and America

Posted by TheYank at 7/25/2009 1:01 PM EDT

Every so often the voice of the common, decent people of Ireland demands to be heard despite the media's bias. That happened this week thanks to a wedding and two families' determination to set the record straight as to what happened at the reception.

On Tuesday of this week the Irish Times reported that American soldiers had "gate-crashed" a wedding in Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare. The soldiers were staying at a hotel near Shannon Airport for a couple of days because the airplane that was due to take them to Iraq had some form of fault.

The Times' report had a very negative tone. You just got the sense that American soldiers had disrupted the wedding, alienated two families and their friends and, probably, upset a girl on the biggest day of her life. Oh yeah, and you'd also have thought they were ill-disciplined as the report said that an officer "tried to get them out of the hall." Probably drinking too much was an instinctive thought.

Then over the next few days the full truth emerged. The soldiers had not gate-crashed the wedding at all. They had been invited in and, in fact, their behavior was "exemplary," according to the father of the bride. Better than that, the bride and groom themselves were "proud" to have the troops there and told the Evening Herald that they "had great fun with them all."

Then the bride's mother was quoted, "These young soldiers were absolute gentlemen and were very welcome at the wedding." Words to make any American proud.

Oh, and what about their discipline? Again, the bride's mother:
They were all drinking Coke and other minerals [sodas] as they were not allowed to drink alcohol.
A lieutenant stood at the door of the reception and only allowed six to eight soldiers to be present in the room at any one time for just a half-hour each. They took turns to attend and some of them danced their brains out.

What a great story. Two Irish families welcoming in bored, young American soldiers and allowing them to partake of a great family occasion and the soldiers behaving like "absolute gentlemen." This is the real relationship between Ireland and America, not what the Irish Times and a few select cranks who always seem to find an ear in the media would have us believe.

The Irish Times never bothered to revisit this story. It doesn't suit the Times' world-view to portray the American soldiers in such a light. They prefer painting them as Nazi storm-troopers wading into the Warsaw Ghetto to the truth. God forbid it would get out that American soldiers can behave properly or that any Irish families would welcome in Americans in uniform.