Gosh there are some people on here who really do over analyse things.
The world can be an unpleasant place, human nature has shown itself to be incredibly destructive over the years.
With this in mind i am more than happy with the UK having an aggressive foreign policy and mounting various foreign escapades to effect regime change that favours the UK or to secure oil supplies….its a dog eat dog world and i sleep like a baby knowing that the UK government is usually quite happy to crap on a weaker country in order to maintain this status quo.
Back to the original post, RIP McAleese….men of his ilk are awesome, totally unencumbered by the wishy washy morals the rest of us fret over.