St. Patrick's preview

About a month back, a drive-by commenter suggested that “War on Terror” ought best be understood as “War on Terrorists of the Wrong Sort”. To which I replied:

Enlightened self-interest dictates that not every terrorist movement will be treated alike: the Administration isn't going to spend overmuch energy worrying about Maoist rebels in Nepal, for instance. I would nonetheless argue that current policy is more consistent than in the past. For one example, this White House is far less welcoming to Sinn Fein types than was Clinton's.

Being from the UK, he was less than impressed.

“Less welcoming” to Sinn Fein: but why not “determined to help the Brits and the Irish Republic deal with those murderous bastards”? And praise for W in terms of less-bad-than-Clinton is faint praise indeed.

Which kinda stung. I did manage to retort that “one could hardly expect the American President to take a harder line on the IRA than Britain's own PM.” Which seemed true enough, at the time.

But as Mark Steyn notes, perhaps not for much longer—and a good thing, too, even if a gruesome murder prompted the hardening of resolve. (You may not want to eat lunch while reading the following.)

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.

At NRO, John Cullinan provides more context, including background on the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and recent actions by IRA/Sinn Fein.

Also underlying the Good Friday Agreement were extraordinarily difficult and painful moral compromises, especially the release of all paramilitary prisoners as part of a general amnesty for all “political” crimes (including hundreds of murders). But the two most contentious issues — paramilitary arms and post-agreement policing arrangements — proved impossible to resolve and were largely deferred to international commissions. These two issues have proven as inseparable as they are intractable. Both are at the heart of the ongoing political and moral crisis touched off by the dynamics set in motion by a robbery and a murder in Belfast.

The robbery in question was no less than the largest single bank heist ever committed in the British Isles. While masked gunmen held hostage family members of two key employees, a gang of thieves operating with military precision made off with $50 million from the Belfast headquarters of Northern Ireland’s largest bank last December 20.

To borrow a colorful Belfast phrase for undisputed matters of acknowledged fact, even the dogs in the street soon knew that this crime was the unmistakable handiwork of the Irish Republican Army, the so-called military wing of Sinn Fein, the Irish-republican political party. Confirmation came swiftly from the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, senior officials in Belfast and London, and an international commission charged with monitoring paramilitary organizations. Ahern in particular was aggrieved that at precisely the same time he was negotiating the latest failed political initiative with senior Sinn Fein officials, the same officials were signing off on the IRA bank heist. “What sort of eejits do they take us for?” asked Ahern.

IRA/Sinn Fein are accustomed to quite literally getting away with murder. The “peace process” in Northern Ireland bears more than a passing resemblance to the similarly misnamed travesty in the Middle East. Except, of course, that Europeans are the primary apologists for Palestinian depravity, whilst support for IRA thuggery has been a long-running fashion among the “hypenated Irishmen” of Boston and New York.

Yanking the welcome mat out from under Gerry Adams is a largely symbolic gesture; I'd prefer that he be invited, just so the Secret Service could take him out back and beat him within an inch of his life. Of course that would never happen. But maybe, just maybe, the President can convince PMs Ahern and Blair of the need to take out their trash.

More at The Times of London: IRA plc turns from terror into biggest crime gang in Europe.