Commenter John Thacker points me to a London Times article showing Bush doing a smart and moral thing.
Henry Farrell had suggested, and I approved of, the notion of Bush disinviting the Sinn Fein to the St. Patrick’s day celebration at the White House. He’s done that and more:
The sisters and the fiancée of a Catholic man said to have been murdered by the IRA will be fêted by President Bush in the White House on St Patrick’s Day as part of a strategy calculated by Washington to isolate Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader.
Paula McCartney and her four sisters, as well as Bridgeen Hagans, who was to marry Robert McCartney this summer, will fly to Washington on March 15 to highlight their campaign to bring his killers to justice.
Good for him.
Yes, among other things it makes policy clearly anti-terrorist ATB, not just against Arab or Islamic terrorists. And it’s becoming clearer that Sinn Fein has been playing both sides of the fence for some time now. Actually, that g-d Irish conflict has been institutionalized for so long now I doubt the original motivations are much more than token excuses to keep a good thing going for the BS-BSes (Big-Shot Bull-Shitters) in charge. Sort of like the Arab hate-exploiters beating the battered old Zionist drum. It’s about time they were all put out to pasture, or better yet sent to the glue factory.
Somehow I don’t think this had anything to do with Henry Farrell. This has everything to do with George Bush and the kind of man he is.
While I congratulate the President on this move, I hope that he extends the same welcome he did to Sinn Fein to Mr. Paisley and his ilk, who can be labled as terrorists as well.
The question is why Gerry Adams will even be allowed into this country, now that he’s been indentified as one of the seven members of the IRA ruling council. Remember, this is a criminal (look up the Northern Bank robbery in December) and terrorist gang.
Thanks for blogging on this. As best as I can tell from technorati, only a few American bloggers (including me) have been on the McCartney story.
nyfg:
_”Mr. Paisley and his ilk, who can be labled as terrorists…”_
Doubtful. Paisley is a deeply unpleasant man, a bigot, a hatemonger, and his party, the Democratic Unionists, historically a stubborn upholder of Prot./Unionist dominance and generally an obstacle to peaceful progress in Northern Ireland.
However, though DUP membership and links to the Orange Order have some overlap with membership of Protestant/Unionist terrorists/criminals/paramilitaries, they do not have the virtual identity of Sinn Fein and P-IRA. The P/U paramilitaries in fact set up _separate_ political parties; which were often _more_ amenable to the peace process than the DUP, which has always tried to make a point of standing as staunch supporters of legality (because the DUP constituency felt they benefitted from the pre-Process legal/institutional order). And their armed factions have now degenerated into politically ineffectual criminal gangs.
Whereas Sinn Fein/P-IRA continue to combine, in an organised fashion, a powerful and sophisticated political machine, “military” potential, low grade terror against their “own” community for political discipline, and violence against “private enterprise” criminals and Protestant thugs in a way that enables them to pose as a “shadow” policing agency.
The point is, that this game is played out. Sinn Fein have reached a decision point; key segments of the public and political players in north and south are no longer willing to sustain the previously politically convenient fiction of the separate identities of Sinn Fein and P-IRA, and to tolerate a political party that raises funds through crime, marshals support assisted by intimidation, and maintains a “military” option, and yet demands a place in conventional politics.
Sinn Fein now has to choose between the dubious pleasures of criminality, and the recalcitrance of its “militants” and “traditionalists” (and perhaps the personal power and profit of street toughs and crime-lords) on the one hand, and the path of civilian, law-abiding politics on the other.
It can fully “go legit”, and leave the past behind; or likely lose the opening. But trying to continue to work both sides of the street is an path running into wasteland now.
And, incidentally, if Sinn Fein _does_ take the road of legality, the political dynamic will also likely enable moves to weed out the DUP/Orangist/paramilitary penumbra, and the remaining criminal and terrorist associations of the Protestant/Unionist minor parties.
It’s great to see other Americans commenting on this story (other than us lonely few in Ireland). The squeaky wheels who make the most noise in the US have been almost completely co-opted by Sinn Fein (the IRA’s political wing).
Pressure needs to be applied to people like Pete King (R-NY) and Jim Walsh (R-NY) to get the fundraising cut off – which has made Sinn Fein the best-funded, most media-savvy political party in Ireland – and that’s beginning to destablise Ireland itself. They may hold the balance of power in the next election here.
So please give the McCartney family a warm welcome and some needed attention next week.
What p££ses me more than anything is that remedial George Bush and his ar#e buddy tony blair, always pick on the republicans in decommisioning the IRA, well what about the friggin loyalists’ seriously the IRA was formed becauses of the treatment of the cats at the hands of the prods.
The whole peace process is a shambles because it is all one sided, that creepy Ian Paisley is the an evil terrorist, and he has the odasity to call sinn fien terrorists.
I for one am sick of the treatment of catholics in NI and it is across the board from the orange men in NI to wnka blair and now bush, bush is the biggest terrorist of them all.
Irish – Americans, this is who you voted for, a ret ard with more diplomatic skill than atila the hun