OPINION:YOU MAY, from time to time, find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to justify some atrocity or other. This can lead to anxiety, awkwardness and social embarrassment. In extreme cases, you may even find yourself blurting out obscene words such as “wrong”, “immoral” or “sorry”. But these problems can be avoided by following our simple, six-step guide to defending the indefensible, writes Fintan O'Toole

1. Why are you saying this? Always begin by questioning the motives of those who draw attention to unfortunate incidents such as the shelling of schools, the blocking of ambulances, the placing of bombs in restaurants, the firing of rockets into towns etc. They are anti-Semites, anti-Irish, anti-Islam – whatever. Even when you know the charge to be untrue, make them deny it.

If confronted with an obviously independent, respected and neutral organisation – the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, a UN agency – react more in sorrow than anger. Accept that they are acting for the best motives, but regret that they have been cynically manipulated by evil forces. This gives you a double whammy – the implication that your critics are stupid and another cynical abuse to chalk up against your enemies.

2. What about . . .? What about 800 years of oppression? What about Hamas’s charter? What about Cromwell? What about the Holocaust? What about the H-Blocks? What about the rockets? It is true, of course, that logic dictates that revulsion at one atrocity should apply to all others. Unless “we” are innately superior to “them” (we are, but let’s not go there), the same standards have to apply. But your job is not about logic – it’s about emotion and distraction. What-aboutery generates passionate indignation and, more importantly, means that you don’t have to actually address what you’ve done. This, remember, is your primary task – to fill the airwaves or the newspapers with everything except an actual engagement with the atrocities.

3. They did it themselves. Yes, we pulled the trigger, dropped the bomb, fired the shell, aimed the rocket, strapped on the explosives. But none of this would have happened if they hadn’t partitioned Ireland, refused to recognise the state of Israel, voted for Sinn Féin, voted for Hamas . . . and so on. Repeat the phrases “inevitable consequence” and “unavoidable tragedy”. Use them often enough and your actual human agency will completely disappear. Murder is really suicide.

4. We gave a warning. We left a coded message saying that the bombs were about to go off. We dropped leaflets from the sky telling civilians to evacuate the area. Maybe the warning was a little imprecise or a little late. Maybe, when they evacuated one side of the town, we exploded car bombs in the area they ran into. Maybe, when they sought refuge in schools flying the UN flag, we shelled those buildings too. But we gave a warning.

5. There is no morality, only “moralising”. Morality is an awkward bugger in these circumstances, not least because it can play hell with your own conscience. There is, thankfully, an almost magical solution – the beautiful word “moralising”. It transforms that nasty stuff about right and wrong into a contest between insufferable prigs (them) and clear-eyed realists (you). It shifts the ground from the atrocities you have committed or supported to the psychological flaws of those who get upset about them – all with the addition of five little letters. For advanced practitioners, “moralising” may be combined with “grandstanding” in a contemptuous sweep like “the throng of moralising grandstanders”, but it generally requires at least a university professorship to pull off such a comprehensive dismissal of international humanitarian law.

6. We are at war with them to save ourselves. We have to do it to them before they do it to us. Other neat formulations include: “Here, just as generally, humanity would amount to the greatest cruelty towards our own people”; “The only way to cope with them is to treat them with the necessary brutality. If you spare them, you’ll later be their victim”; and “If we didn’t fend them off, they would annihilate us.” These latter phrases, nicely turned though they are, need to be used with caution and not in front of historically literate audiences who might recognise their origins in early 1940s Germany. If anyone should point out such parallels, however, see point one.

Used in the right combination, these simple devices can generate a surprising amount of obfuscation, distraction and misinformation. Other devices, like controlling the flow of information by keeping journalists out and downright, barefaced lies, are useful but not strictly necessary.

The only restriction on the use of this six-step programme is that it is best not used by those who have criticised such devices in the past. If, for example, you spent many years exposing the sickening hypocrisy and evasion of the IRA in relation to its atrocities against civilians during the Troubles, it is probably best not to deploy the same linguistic manoeuvres in defence of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. In such circumstances, if you can’t be consistent, it is probably best to be silent.