Posted on 09/06/2004 8:46:48 PM PDT by Murtyo
IN a week in whichhundreds of schoolchildren and their parents were taken hostage by Chechen separatists inRussia, and in which 12 Nepalese hostages were murdered by those the BBC and RTE like to call the "Iraqi resistance", it was a small incident, easily overlooked.
But last weekend, a small explosion occurred on the premises of the Christian pilgrimage centre Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Nobody was injured, either by that bomb or another in a nearby seaside town, but it was the latest in a series of attacks on tourist targets by Basque separatists who, since August, have begun to re-emerge after five months of quiet.
The reason for the lull was, of course, the detonation in March of 10 bombs on four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people - another triumph in al-Qaeda'sbattle to show the world the moral superiority of Islamic culture.
The latest attacks by Eta are a stinging rejoinder to the self-appointed experts who, in the aftermath of the Madrid slaughter, confidentlypredicted that Spain was so sickened by what had been done that Basque separatists would be forced in future to rethink their tactics andabandon violence.
They did rethink them.
For five months.
Then they just went back to the old ways.
That terrorism never really goes away, but sometimes just hibernates until its next incarnation, explains why the Northern Ireland talks restarted this week, and why they are being widely touted as of historic importance.
Being widely touted again, that should be, since it's not as if this is the first time talks on the future of Ulster have been described that way.
Partly this is the fault of journalists themselves who would rather collude in the pretence of historic progress rather than admitting that what they're actuallyreporting on is just another spin on a neverending merry-go-round.
Partly, too, it's a result of Northern Irish politicians'absolute faith in their ownimportance.
Us, attend mere talks about talks?
No, these are historic encounters, mate.
Yeah, whatever.
Yet while the media and the politicians might wrap themselves in delusions about history, the people themselves are rather less impressed, barely stifling a yawn as talks get underway.
And why should they beimpressed?
They may be glad that violence has dissipated, though not vanished - there were still over 160 deaths from terrorism in the North in the 10 years since the ceasefire, hardly a negligible number - but they have to live with the consequences of the Troubles. And that legacy is a society more mired in criminality and brutality than ever before.
It is foolish to expect people to feel thrilled at the prospect of handing the responsibility for clearing up this mess to the very people who created it in the first place - either directly or indirectly by forging an intellectual climate of fear and crisis.
The other problem is that the talks which got underway last week will not make one iota of difference to the lives of ordinary people.
They are merely to find a way to facilitate the desire of the North's politicians to get their snouts back into the trough of devolution.
It is doubtful if many Irish people, north or south, give a tuppence whether Northern Ireland is governed fromLondon, Stormont or the Planet Venus. They just want the subject of Northern Ireland to go away.
Devolution certainly makes no difference to the way the place is governed.
Indeed, one might ask rather why it takes two First Ministers, 10 further Cabinet Ministers and 108 MLAs to do a job that was once done perfectly adequately by the UK's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and a handful of junior ministers.
That, however, is the one thing they will not be talking about in the North over the next few weeks.
Strange, huh?
They would all rather get into a ritualistic froth ofoutrage about every imagined slight which history or their neighbours or the world at large has visited upon them.
Step forward then this week's "injustice": a comment by White House special adviser Karl Rove, who equated the US war against terrorism with the British fight against the IRA.
Friday's Morning Ireland even managed to dig up somebody from an organisation called Americans For A New Irish Agenda (nope, I've never heard of them either) who claimed Irish-Americans were "angry" that the Bush administration was equating al-Qaeda and the IRA.
One might suggest that if the IRA did not wish to be compared to other terrorists around the world, then they should not have spent the last few decades sharing the same enthusiasm for blowing things up. But this is to make the mistake of acting as though the anger of Irish-Americans was something to be seriously addressed rather than simply mocked.
They're always angry about something or other, and life's too short to worry too deeply about whatever particular thing happens to be annoying them today.
Especially when tomorrow it'll just be somethingelse anyway.
Of course, RTE don't seriously care either what Karl Rove said about the IRA. The furore is just another part of the British and Irish liberal media's campaign for the election of John Kerry - and it epitomises all that's wrong with both them and theDemocrat candidate.
Forced to choose betweenpampering the sensitive egosof Irish republicans who don'tlike to think of themselvesas terrorists, or elsesimply making a clear standagainst fascism in whatever guise it appears, they canalways be relied upon tochoose wrongly.
It's what they're best at.
That is why George Bush was never going to get any credit abroad for a superb speech to the Republican Convention in New York last week, and why the rest of us should be mightily relieved if the speech puts the Bushcampaign back on the right track at home.
IRA, al-Qaeda, Eta: delineating the oh-so-subtle differences between fanatics is just a modern-day version of the old Jesuit practice of counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Or in this particular case, devils.
If the result of what theydo is dismembered bodies in the street, then semantics really is irrelevant.
© Irish Independent http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/
But didn't Clinton fix all this?
Right on. This American of Irish ancestry (I've never been into that hyphenate junk) has always been ashamed of the IRA butchery.
Wipe out all terrorists.
bttt
Karl Rove is correct to compare al-Qaeda and the IRA - they're all Thugs.
True, as I said to you before; we should tear up the GFA, and lock the convicted murders back again.
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