Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

So, the monster was not made a martyr. "America, you lost. I won" he shouted as he was being led out of the courtroom, but he got that wrong, too. The murderous Islamist who planned to kill as many innocent people as possible was given due process, and instead of being executed, Al-Qaeda 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui will spend the remainder of his life in prison without parole in solitary confinement in a maximum security jail. He lost. America won.

But then the US has the advantage of might (and right) on its side in this war. Magnanimity is affordable. Smaller nations cannot allow such luxuries and must take more draconian steps to ensure survival. Take Ireland, for example. Back when Éire, as the Irish Free State came to be called, was struggling for survival, the IRA staged one of its cyclical efforts to destabilize the nascent nation. By incarcerating the terrorists in a camp on the windswept Curragh of Kildare, the man charged with facing down the fanatics resorted to measures that would make Guantanamo appear like Club Med. But Eamon De Valera had only to look into his heart to know what he was up against. After all, he had been a militant republican himself and he understood what made terrorists tick.

So, hundreds of "insurgents" were rounded up and interned without trial, and special Military Courts, where the only sentence was death and the verdict could not be appealed, were set up. Those who opted for that most emotive of Irish weapons, the hunger strike, got a shock. Unlike that nasty Mr Rumsfeld who force-feeds hunger strikers to keep them alive, Dev set a precedent that was applied 40 years later by the steely Mrs Thatcher. He allowed the "martyrs" to starve themselves to death. On 16 April 1940, after a fast of 50 days, Tony D'Arcy died in St. Bricin's Hospital. John McNeela lasted a further three days before he, too, died. D'Arcy had been serving three months for "refusing to answer questions," and knew he would be interned upon release. McNeela had been sentenced to two years for possessing a radio transmitter.

In dealing with the more bloodthirsty IRA members, Dev showed no mercy. In September 1940, Paddy McGrath and Tom Harte were executed and by 1944 a further four republican prisoners had met the same fate. The poverty-stricken state could not afford the upkeep of an executioner, but the great anti-imperialist De Valera was not averse to a bit of pragmatism when the services of a hangman were required. Guess what he did? And what do you think Dev would have done with Moussaoui?