Irish Examiner View: US messaging controversy is very telling
US president Donald Trump and secretary of defense Pete Hegseth. Picture: AP
Even for the most jaded news consumers, the latest developments in American politics come as a shock.
magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg revealed this week that he had been accidentally added to a messaging group, receiving details of American military plans — specifically, the plans to attack the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The national security council has since confirmed that the messages shared with Mr Goldberg, which feature contributions from vice president JD Vance and secretary of defence Pete Hegseth, were genuine.
Students of the power struggle within the Trump administration have enjoyed teasing out the hierarchies revealed by the messages, but this latest disaster from the current US administration has far more serious repercussions.
The carelessness in using such a method for such messaging is a worrying indictment for American security in general; for a regime which makes much of its commitment to keeping America safe, this kind of barely believable error puts lives in danger.
The administration’s specific reaction to the news was telling.
The man leading America, president Donald Trump, at first said he knew nothing about the matter before downplaying it later as a glitch and criticising . Mr Hegseth also criticised the magazine and said: “Nobody was texting war plans.” (The National Security Council, in a valiant effort to snatch an honourable draw from the mess, described the messages as “a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy co-ordination between senior officials”.)
The controversy will have a strong political resonance in the US. The intense focus on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of private a email server for public communications some years ago seems almost innocent in comparison to this mess.
Readers who may be chortling at the shenanigans in Washington DC should pause and consider the wider context involved here. If this is how the highest officials in the US operate, it does not augur well for any of us.
Foreign affairs minister Simon Harris is visiting Lebanon this week, where he will meet with the Irish soldiers who are part of the long-standing Unifil peacekeeping force.
He will also meet with politicians in Lebanon to raise the killing of Irish soldier Private Seán Rooney, and the slow progress in bringing those responsible to justice.
Pt Rooney was shot and killed near the village of Al-Aqbiya south Lebanon in 2022, and while seven people have been indicted for the killing, only one of them has been detained.
“I am looking forward to meeting the defence minister and the foreign affairs minister tomorrow where I will have an opportunity to raise the case of Private Seán Rooney,” said Mr Harris before leaving for Lebanon.
“It is simply not acceptable to the Irish Government that it has taken so long to make progress in relation to the trial of those accused of the murder of Pt Rooney, and I look forward to conveying that in the strongest possible terms.”
Mr Harris is correct to describe this delay as unacceptable.
It is now almost two and a half years since Pt Rooney was killed, and his colleague, Trooper Shane Kearney, seriously injured, and since then the wheels of investigation, never mind justice, have turned very slowly.
The UN was itself criticised last year for not releasing crucial information to aid the inquest into Pt Rooney’s death, and it was as late as December 2024 when the UN made more details available to the Rooney family.
Pt Rooney made the ultimate sacrifice, saving the lives of his comrades as he drove them away from a confrontation in Lebanon.
The lack of progress in bringing his killers to justice is an insult to him and to his family.
Another day, another feast of unruly scenes in the Dáil Chamber.
As expected, matters became heated very quickly in Leinster House yesterday, with the opposition and Government at loggerheads again over the issue of speaking time.
It would be an unnecessary cruelty to inflict too much detail on readers when they have already suffered so much on this front. Suffice to say the Government side was playing down the significance of speaking time and the opposition playing it up; one side called yesterday the “dark day of Irish democracy”, and the other side responded by saying that that description was “farcical”.
And, right on cue, we had the suspension of the house due to the roaring.
'Farce' looks like a reasonable description of the entire situation. This, the 34th Dáil, met for the first time on December 18, and this row ignited that day. Now it is three months later and the row is still rumbling along in the background. The public could be forgiven for a certain weariness with this nonsense by now.
There is no shortage of pressing issues to deal with, from the ongoing housing crisis, which shows no sign of abating, to the turmoil in Washington and its implications for us. There is Conor McGregor’s gross peacocking, and the fallout from conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
Our parliamentarians may have made their points about procedure, but they have opened themselves to a searching question. Is this intermittent chaos a true reflection of the operation of national politics? Because if it is — complete with grandstanding, name-calling, and roaring — then we have little chance of working out solutions to the real problems that face us.
