Standing up against the IRA

New York Daily News ^ | 14 MARCH 2005 | Editorial

[elhombrelibre]

Standing up against the IRA

Thousands have been killed in sectarian strife in Northern Ireland and thousands of families have mourned, but it may be the death of one man and the courage of his family that mark a turning point among people who had heretofore been IRA supporters - or, by their coerced silence, IRA enablers.

The sisters of Robert McCartney live in a Catholic enclave in Belfast, the sort of neighborhood where, if you do not back the IRA and Sinn Fein (make no mistake, they are one and the same), you at least do not defy them. Defy, however, is what the sisters McCartney have done. And it has earned them an invitation to the White House and the adulation of peace-seeking people everywhere.

Robert McCartney was literally butchered by IRA men Jan. 30 when he came to the aid of a pal in a Belfast pub fight. The "freedom fighters" cleansed the place of incriminating evidence and told the 70 or so people present to keep their gobs shut - or else. Last week, the IRA shot itself in both knees when it obscenely offered to execute the murderers. The response by the family and the victim's fiancée was proud: Thanks, but no thanks. And they decried the IRA's "ongoing intimidation" of anyone who could bring the killers - whose identities the IRA obviously knows - to legitimate justice.

The episode certified the IRA's continuing criminality, not that there was any doubt after a robbery in December that relieved a Belfast bank of some $50 million. Suspicion immediately fell on the IRA, which responded with outrage at the alleged calumny. And no one believed a ludicrous word of its self-defense.

President Bush certainly wasn't buying. For the first time in 10 years, Sinn Fein leaders will not be his White House guests during St. Patrick's week. Mitchell Reiss, the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland and therefore representative, expressed the administration's thinking succinctly: "It's time for the IRA to go out of business. And it's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated."

Sinn Fein feeds upon ambiguity and ambivalence, which is why the peace process in Northern Ireland has never reached fruition. Which is why, even after 9/11, Sinn Fein could not bring itself to condemn terrorism. To do so would be to condemn itself. It's time for Sinn Fein and the IRA to join the rest of the terrorist outcasts of the world. They are not heroes or liberators. They are thieves, money launderers, gun runners, petty criminals and killers. They have no place in civilized negotiations. Soon, it is to be hoped, they will have no place anywhere - most importantly in the neighborhoods they had controlled through terror.

[Brox]

Which is why, even after 9/11, Sinn Fein could not bring itself to condemn terrorism

And this group of child-murderers have been welcome at the Whitehouse even after 9/11. And you wonder why Britons who support America pull our hair out in despair.