Faux Terrorists

John O'Sullivan has a recap on the terrorists who used to have movies made about them: The IRA. He suggests that the President ought to snub Sinn Fein on next St. Patrick's Day. I'm all for it. My contempt for the IRA is greater than that I have for the Islamofascists. They, at least, have the courage (twisted, cruel, monstrous courage, but courage nonetheless) of their convictions. They truly believe, in their bigoted way, that their actions are going to bring about the rule of holiness and virtue on Earth, the destruction of all that is evil. That is not to say that there are not charlatans and sinecure-hunters among them; there are. But their religious fury, horrific though it be, is genuine.

The IRA, methinks, doesn't even pretend to genuine relgious fury, if ever they have it. The "troubles" in Ireland are tribal, not really religious. It isn't about the varieties of Christian doctrine that Catholics and Protestants are fighting; it's the settling of old scores, and new ones. The Catholics in Ireland are the "natives" who've lived there since the Bronze Age. The Protestants are the "newcomers," mostly Scottish, who settled during the 17th Century (Never mind that a goodly number of the Scots came originally from Ireland; Ireland was once called Scota, and please please let's keep this logic from the Indians, shall we?). The slapping's been going on ever since.

I doubt very much that the IRA even believes its going to accomplish its stated objective of driving British authority from Northern Ireland. After 30 years, they've accomplished hardly a thing towards that end. By way of comparison, the Communists in Vietnam started from being a nothing organization in the 1940's to controlling half their country in 1954 to controlling all of it by 1976. Those guys meant what they said, and killed millions to accomplish what they said they wanted.

These ersatz Mick revolutionaries are a bunch of clowns, drug dealers and street thugs with expensive toys and nasty connections playing at war. They're not willing to really fight for what they say they want, not enough to achieve it, anyway. Plus, they're fighting the ground nubbin of yesterday's war. The Penal Laws have been abolished. The Irish Republic has been a going concern for decades, and it has a real army of its own. There's more southerners still mad at Sherman than there are Irish still mad at William III.

All these "boyos" need to be steadily penetrated, arrested, and sent away to the Isle of Man, like the FBI's been doing to the Mafia. And if George Bush isn't going to spend Columbus Day with the consiglieres of the Five Families, I don't see that he should be in the same time zone as Gerry Adams on St. Patrick's Day.