Posted on 03/13/2005 3:19:42 AM PST by elhombrelibre
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Happy St. Patrick's Day to my fellow hyphenated Irishmen. And the good news about this St. Paddy's Day is that for the first time in a decade the official observances will not be disfigured by the presence at the White House of Gerry Adams.
Adams is usually billed as the "President of Sinn Fein," which in turn is usually billed as the "political wing" of the IRA. This artful form of words is supposed to suggest some kind of distinction between "President" Adams and the murkier fellows who do all the bombing and killing and knee-capping. In fact, as the Irish government recently revealed, "President" Adams is a member of the Provisional IRA's ruling "army council" -- i.e., the fellows who order all the bombing and killing and knee-capping.
So instead of one more chorus of "The Wearing of the Green," it's the wearing out of the welcome for Adams at the White House. In his place, President Bush will welcome the fiancee and five sisters of Robert McCartney. McCartney was a Belfast Catholic and a Sinn Fein supporter, but he made the mistake of getting into an argument with a Provisional IRA big shot in a pub in January. The other "Provos" present grabbed McCartney, beat him with iron sewer rods, slit him open from his neck to his navel, severed his jugular and jumped on his head, causing what was left of it to lose an eye. There were 70 witnesses in the bar but none of them saw a thing.
Depravity-wise, what exactly is the difference between McCartney's murder and the lynching of the four U.S. contractors in Fallujah? None -- except that the organization responsible for the former has enjoyed a decade of White House photo-ops.
Bridgeen Hagans, the late McCartney's fiancee, and his sisters are in America as part of their campaign to persuade some of the dozens of witnesses to his killing to come forward. They're reluctant to do so because, as in any third-rate gangster state, testifying against the local warlords can be severely injurious to one's own health. Recognizing that they had a public relations disaster on their hands, the IRA then offered to make amends to McCartney's grieving loved ones. You're right, they said, it was all a mistake, but don't worry, we're really sorry about it -- and, just to show how sorry we are, we'll murder his murderers for you. As an afterthought, they acknowledged that, as a lot of folks were upset by the brutality of the McCartney whack job, when they got around to murdering his murderers, they'd eschew the sewer rods, abdomen-slitting, etc., and just do it nice and clean with a bullet straight to the head. Very decent of them.
There's a lesson there in the reformability of terrorists. The IRA's first instinct is to kill. If you complain about the killing, they offer to kill the killers. If you complain about the manner of the killing, they offer to kill more tastefully -- "compassionate terrorism,'' as it were. But it's like Monty Python's spam sketch: There's no menu item that doesn't involve killing. You can get it in any color as long as it's blood-red.
For the last 3-1/2 years one of the most persistent streams of correspondence I've had is from British readers sneering, ''Oh-ho. So America's now waging a war on 'terror,' is she? Well, where were the bloody Yanks the last 30 years? Passing round the collection box for IRA donations in the bars of Boston and New York, that's where.''
They have a point. Blowing up grannies and schoolkids at bus stops is always wrong, and the misty shamrock-hued sentimentalization of it in this particular manifestation speaks poorly for America, the principal source for decades of IRA funding. On the other hand, it was the London and Dublin governments, not Washington, that decided they were going to accommodate the IRA, Her Majesty's government going so far at one point as to install Gerry Adams and his colleagues in the coalition administration of Northern Ireland, making IRA terrorists ministers of a crown they don't even deign to recognize.
Now Tony Blair & Co. profess to be shocked to discover that the leopard hasn't changed his spots. But, until January, if you raised the IRA's vicious methods of retribution against dissident Catholics, British officials would chortle urbanely and assure you it was just a little ''internal housekeeping'' by Adams and his chums.
So London and Dublin have only themselves to blame for the present situation. By enhancing the prestige of the terrorists, they've enabled Sinn Fein to supplant moderate Catholic political parties in both Northern and Southern Ireland. Because they no longer have to engage in the costly and time-consuming business of waging war against the British Army, they've been free to convert themselves into the emerald isle's answer to the Russian Mafia. They recently pulled off the biggest bank heist in British history -- snaffling just shy of 50 million bucks from the vaults of Ulster's Northern Bank. What do they need that money for? Well, it helps them fund their real objective: the takeover of southern Ireland.
In hindsight, the '90s were the apogee of terrorist mainstreaming, with Yasser and Gerry given greater access to the White House than your average prime minister of a friendly middle-rank power. And in return for what? Nothing other than the corrosive impact on weak-willed Westerners desperate to believe that all terrorists can somehow be accommodated if you just roll out the red carpet for them. Witness Robert McNamara, the Kennedy/Johnson defense secretary who popped up last week with a particularly fatuous observation even by his own standards: As Associated Press reported, ''McNamara added that the threat of terrorists using a nuclear device could be reduced if the United States in particular tried to understand terrorists' anger and motivations.''
As we now know, even the saner end of the terrorism business is difficult to house train. If your main expertise is in killing people, it's hardly surprising the prospect of being deputy transport minister in Belfast seems a bit tame. President Bush, unlike his predecessor, is under no illusions about the trustworthiness of Adams, any more than he was of Arafat's. After he declared his "war on terror," many on the right mocked the idea of being at war with a phenomenon. But the IRA has long ties to the PLO and to Latin American terrorist groups: Terrorists gravitate to other terrorists. So this March 17 the president is merely following the logic of his own post-9/11 analysis. St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland. The least Bush can do is chase them out of the White House.
He gave us the Ford Falcon.
In hindsight, the '90s were the apogee of terrorist mainstreaming, with Yasser and Gerry given greater access to the White House than your average prime minister of a friendly middle-rank power. And in return for what? Nothing other than the corrosive impact on weak-willed Westerners desperate to believe that all terrorists can somehow be accommodated if you just roll out the red carpet for them. Witness Robert McNamara, the Kennedy/Johnson defense secretary who popped up last week with a particularly fatuous observation even by his own standards: As Associated Press reported, ''McNamara added that the threat of terrorists using a nuclear device could be reduced if the United States in particular tried to understand terrorists' anger and motivations.''
A Steyn ping.
He was a Whiz Kid from Ford, elevated by JFK. Kennedy should've known better, but he'd spent his whole life in government service.
I'm thrilled to death he did this. I've always thought the two wings, political and terrorist, was an improbable definition. It's like believing there are two wings to Hizbollah or Hamas.
When Steyn mentions the average PM of a friendly middle power, he's talking about Canada. I believe Steyn is Canadian by birth too, and he's unsurprisingly reviled by many up here. I must say that our last couple of Prime Ministers have earned zero hospitality in Washington, though.
bump for later. Good on Bush for not having the murderer Gerry Adams in the White House.
Adams will meet congressmen and senators but he can expect harsh words from some. Senator Edward Kennedy, a leading supporter of Irish nationalism, said: “There is no place for a paramilitary organisation and criminal activity in a democratic political party, and I will tell Gerry Adams that.”
Congressman Peter King, Adams’s biggest ally on Capitol Hill and a personal friend, added: “The time has come for the IRA to disband . . . I think Adams is focusing too much on preventing a split and can’t see the forest for the trees.”
US turns its back on Sinn Fein
FWIW...
I couldn't agree more. Saw some of that "They're patriots" crap on a Sinn Fein thread last night, disgusting.
Thank you for this ping. Better pass out the barf bags regarding McNamaras idiotic and inferiority-complex ridden comments.
He may not meet him publicly, but I would bet they meet.
Time will tell, but I don't trust anything about King.
Him and Ireland's Eoghan Harris!
Good link prairie. Here's a bit from the article:
"The hat may be discreetly passed round to cover expenses at this week’s events, but there will be no entry charge. Some backers may also feel the £26.5m raid on the Northern Bank in Belfast just before Christmas, for which the IRA has been blamed, makes the need for funds less urgent."
LOL, ya think?
Too true. Several years ago I was having brunch with friends at a popular Irish restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia (which, for those of you not from the area, is just a stone's throw across the Potomac from Washington DC). A movable screen had been used to partition our near-empty section of the dining room from other areas used for meetings, which meant that we could clearly hear, but not see, people nearby having a meeting. It was apparent that the meeting was of a group of Irish-American IRA supporters. We gasped in horror as we heard them quarreling, and one of them raised his voice to shout, "Last time ye didn't use enough C4, ye fool, and all ye did was blow the locomotive off the tracks--no one got killed at all!"
It has also long been said that the popular Capitol Hill bar The Dubliner is owned by the IRA as well. Many is the night we have all seen Teddy Kennedy there, swilling away.
I have no doubt that the organizers of these "charitable" fund raisers for NORAD or for the prisoners relief fund or whatever know full well the money goes for bombs and such. There complicity is of a different magnitude.
I'm quite (pleasantly) surprised by the responses on this thread. I have watched American opinions to the IRA, both left and right, over the years and the thing that struck me is that there are many why are otherwise conservative suddenly go on like Noam "Why Do They Hate You?" Chomsky when Northern Ireland comes up.
It's quite pleasing to see none of such posts on this thread. The power of Steyn's words, or because they have now woken up?
Thanks, that's the drift I caught as well. I grew up in Hong Kong and under the British colonial government it was natural we saw a lot about Northern Ireland. I had never been sympathetic to the IRA years before 9/11 from news coverage - in fact, I treat them in the same cloth as the PLO or ETA or Hamas.
We also have many Irish descents in New Zealand - former Prime Minister Jim Bolger was one example. And there has never been any sympathy for the IRA from these Irish descent New Zealanders. It was different for Americans with Irish ancestors or who don't but weren't well informed.
Also, it seems there is a cultural divide among the Irish in the US. I'd say the dumbest ones about the IRA are those geographically closest, if you know what I mean.
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