THE PATTERNS OF WAR
by Maura Hanrahan
A few weeks in Northern Ireland during "the Troubles" are guaranteed to stay with you. It was the mid-1980s, and my trip included time in a convent near the contentious border, as well as days in a Belfast bed and breakfast not far from the Protestant and Catholic "ghettoes:" Shankhill and Falls Road respectively.
My time in Northern Ireland, and the three years in Britain that surrounded it, were a real education. Images of Monaghan and Antrim come to me whenever I see Peter Mansbridge or Lloyd Robertson introduce a news story or feature item on the war in Afghanistan.
It seems that every war follows the same regrettable patterns.
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