God has an uncanny way of sending me to the hinterlands of geopolitical significance in moments of conflict. When the World Trade Center and Pentagon were hit I was in Eugene, Oregon. By the time the U.S. bombing and ground campaign got underway in early October in Afghanistan, I had safely settled in Limerick, Ireland, next to the thoroughly benign Shannon River. Naturally, as a student of conflict, this was at first a bit disgruntling.

Over the days and weeks that have followed, however, I’ve discovered that in times of war, the periphery of conflict can be just as revealing as the center—especially, if the periphery you happen to inhabit is a small European country with a legacy of international neutrality and internal strife.

I arrive at the University of Limerick just one week after “911.” Irish sentiment on the ground, at least initially, is sympathetic. Professors offer condolences. Fellow classmates want to know if I knew anybody hurt in the attacks. “It’s a horrible thing that happened,” every taxi driver from Dublin to Belfast tells me. At the Northern Ireland Assembly, former IRA leader and now Northern Ireland Education Minister, Martin McGuinness, declares that what happened was, “totally diabolical, absolutely wrong.”

But as the U.S. response unfolds, public opinion, at least from my vantage point, begins to turn. In a local hardware store, I overhear a prim pensioner tell the salesclerk, “If those Yanks think one of our boys is going to die in Afghanistan, they’ve got another thing coming.”

The director of the Peace and Development Studies program at my university reduces the conflict to a matter of perception. “Who’s right?” He questions us. “In our nice, capitalist West, he’s [Osama bin Laden] a terrorist, but in much of the world, he’s a hero.” He challenges the legitimacy of the U.S. retaliation; he worries about the plight of the Afghan people.

Many of my fellow classmates echo his sentiments. Several see U.S. support for Israeli “terrorism” as the root of the conflict. They say the U.S. is being hypocritical when it supports the tactics of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, then takes up arms against the Taliban. War, they assert, must be avoided at all costs. The answer: negotiation.

How do you negotiate with a man who has declared war on America and the government that supports him, I wonder aloud? Nobody seems to care. Even the professor shrugs off my question.

My classmates’ reactions were not the exception, however. Student activism, at least among the most visible elements here, is hardly in the U.S. corner. Around the student center, bulletin boards are crowded with notices decrying U.S. refueling rights at Shannon Air Base and advertising rallies in favor of the ever popular, but proverbially elusive, “Peace.” Other fliers highlight Afghani suffering, or ominously urge students to learn more about “Bush’s War.”

The other day in the cafeteria a young man approached me and asked me if I would sign an anti-war petition. “Absolutely not,” I replied, making no attempt to mask my accent. He retreated quickly, even apologetically, but around his table, a cluster grew. There was seemingly no lack of willing signatories that afternoon.

To be abroad implies a degree of isolation, but to be abroad in time of war can be downright suffocating. In class, I’m no longer one of many, but rather “The American.” I suffer through snide, anti-U.S. comments and stifle the desire to scream. In search of solace, I turn to the internet. I’ve become addicted to the on-line versions of CNN and the Washington Post. Anything to stay connected with my country, my people. Countries are like relatives, I’ve learned. It’s one thing to bash your own, but quite another to have someone else do it.

So who’s to blame for the lagging Irish support for the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan?

In part, it’s the U.S., suggests Sunday Times (Ireland edition) columnist David Quinn. Writing in the National Review On-Line last week, Quinn pointed the finger at the failure of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin to effectively counteract the anti-U.S. bias exhibited by much of the Irish media.

On one level, I would agree. In the Irish Times a columnist laments, “How did the world get to believe that terror and slaughter delivered by a bomb in a car was an atrocity; while much more terror and much more slaughter by airplane or missile is morally ok?” In the Irish Examiner another columnist mocks the futile “Bush fire…to smoke out Osama Bin Laden.”

There’s a proclivity among journalists here to focus on the negative humanitarian impact of the bombings with little or no emphasis on the reasons behind them. Of course, it doesn’t help that former Irish president and now UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has called for the suspension of the U.S. air strikes against Afghanistan. How about calling for the destruction of Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network? How about acknowledging that Bin Laden and his cohorts in the Taliban regime are the ones responsible for the suffering of the Afghan people?

But beyond the general media bias, the Emerald Isle is, itself, a study in contradictions. Externally pacific and internally riven, it has long grappled with its own versions of homegrown terrorism. The last thing the Irish want (or anyone else for that matter) is to be confronted with a Third World War. They have enough problems in their own backyard. Neutrality—at the international level—is in their blood. This is the same nation who sat out WWII, if you recall.

On a deeper level, the anti-U.S. sentiment has much to do with the fundamentals of power and human nature. After all, everybody wants power and nobody likes the guy who has too much of it. With our European allies and friends, this tension has always existed. Their sudden “concern” for Afghanistan can be seen as a symptom of this deeper cleavage. Despite official expressions of support, many Europeans, at heart, don’t really like U.S. power. They would prefer that they, not the U.S., call the shots.

As one of my Irish roommates explained to me, “If we [the European states] were all joined together, we would have been as powerful as you guys [the U.S.]. And if we had also been joined with Russia, we could have had you beat.”

Whoever said realpolitik was out of date?