Sinéad was right

Perhaps even more surprising is O'Connor's take on Sept. 11 and its aftermath. "Paddy's Lament" tells the story of an old Irishman who comes to the United States to flee wars in his homeland only to be conscripted by Lincoln to fight with the Union Army in the Civil War. "What I love about this song is that it's a very powerful antiwar song," she says, "but he doesn't make any judgments of anyone. He understands the humanity of people wanting to fight back but he just expresses concern for his safety."

The song reflects both her pacifist idealism while acknowledging that people don't only fight wars for nefarious reasons. "What war does, sometimes, is it takes your priorities and throws them right out the window," she says. "An old man should never be stuck in the middle of a battlefield. The people who are affected most by war obviously are very young people and very old people."

In "Paddy's Lament," I say, Paddy is being conscripted in the Union Army to fight slavery, which certainly one could argue is a just cause. "Exactly," O'Connor responds. "But then his thing is that Ireland has always been a neutral country -- we wouldn't take sides one way or another. In a war, we'd just be antiwar. So I think that's what he's talking about, he didn't make a choice to be in an army at all, he came to America thinking he was going to make his fortune." That war is ever declared, she says, "shows a lack of consideration for those who are vulnerable in society. Generally wars are over money, really, and it should never be that some old person should be lost in the middle of a battlefield, metaphorically speaking, or literally over oil or money."

But what of our "war on terrorism"? I ask.

She smiles. She likes Paddy, she repeats, because of his refusal to judge those going to war. "I think he understands quite clearly, as I do, the humanity of wanting to fight back and protect your people," she says. "If someone hurt someone in my family I would probably want to fight back as well. I'd probably have to have 10 large people sitting on top of me to stop me."

That O'Connor's anger has subsided shouldn't lead anyone to conclude that she no longer maintains a lot of squishy lefty idealism. "Obviously, I think it's completely inexcusable what happened here on Sept. 11," she says. But, she maintains, it has to be asked why the Sept. 11 terrorists value life so little. "Because the lives that they have led has given them to believe that they are worth nothing and life is worth nothing," she says. "At the end of the day, maybe the better way to sort it all out would be to give these people something of what they need so that they can feel that life is worth more than they obviously feel it is."

The conversation is heading into the typical places of liberal thought, I think, where extremist Islam isn't even mentioned, much less blamed. But by the same token, as an Irishwoman, O'Connor has a more benign view of the U.S. than many of her European counterparts, since she sees the U.S. as a teacher of peace.

"The war that was in my country until I was 33 or so years of age has now ceased because of America coming to our country and teaching us the language of peace," she says. Bombing Afghanistan or Iraq leads her to worry that "if the teacher hasn't learned the lessons how can it pass them on to anyone else? I understand entirely why people would want to fight back. But I don't think it actually achieves anything. It doesn't bring back your lost people."

Being Irish has also led O'Connor resolutely into pacifism. "Very small kids are terrified by the talk of war," she says. "It's very frightening. And even for me as a little girl watching TV about what was happening in Belfast, it really affects your life as a little kid. So I think war itself is a form of terrorism on people who are innocent, that, for example, little kids halfway across the world have to listen to.

"But one other point I want to make," she says. "When you're a singer people are always asking you what you think about all kinds of things in the world -- politics or religion. And then if you say what you think, people make a big thing out of it. At the end of the day, I often wonder why anyone should give a damn what I think."

That said, would she have done anything differently 10 years ago with the wisdom she now has? Would she have changed anything about her actions on "SNL" on Oct. 3, 1992?

"Hell, no," she says. Roisin, her adorable 6-year-old, runs in and hugs her. The interview is over.

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