Posted on 03/09/2005 6:05:20 AM PST by Rogers324
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) -- The United States has demanded that the IRA disband after the guerrilla group's astonishing offer to shoot the killers of a murdered Northern Ireland Catholic man. "It's time for the IRA to go out of business," U.S. special envoy Mitchell Reiss said Wednesday. For the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland's biggest Irish nationalist party, the U.S. demand was yet another blow to its democratic credentials. Reiss told BBC radio: "It's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated. "You can't sign up for the rule of law a la carte." The IRA's offer -- also condemned by London and Dublin -- handed fresh ammunition to Protestant rivals who say Sinn Fein is not fit for government until the Irish Republican Army disarms and disbands. The killing of Robert McCartney by a gang including IRA members has plunged the IRA and Sinn Fein into crisis -- coming just weeks after the guerrilla group was blamed for a £26.5 million ($50 million) bank raid in central Belfast. London and Dublin say there can be no progress on restoring the British-ruled province's regional government -- set up under a 1998 peace deal to share power between divided Protestants and Catholics -- until the issue of IRA criminality is resolved. Home rule was suspended in 2002 when unionists, who support ties to Britain, said they would no longer sit in government with Sinn Fein until the IRA got rid of the weapons which sustained its three-decade campaign against British rule. "It is their declared intent to murder," said hardline Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley in response to the IRA move.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera would beg to differ with your assessment of "doing nothing".
Ireland gained it's independence in 1922. The partition of the north was part of that settlement. Of course people were not happy with that but they were more tired of the bloodshed and just plain worn out.
The modern IRA is not the IRA of 1916. The IRA of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness is a criminal organization using the ruse of Republicanism to continue their rackets.
Yes, I'm aware of the Ian Paisley and the other Protestant malcontents that foment division with the marching season every year but the Sinn Fien/IRA was at the cusp of becoming a legitimate political party but as most people on this board already knew, they just weren't honorable enough to live up to the task.
Let them consigned to the dustbin of history.
What's the problem with disarming then?
Cheers.
To the time machine. Let's corect all past deeds NOW.
Are you joking?! Go take this idiotic argument to a reparations for Black Americans board. You should find lots of friends there.
The problem is the bias against Irish Catholics in London.
The Catholic vs. Protestant rift runs deep. It has caused death from Dublin to the five points. The IRA began as an Armed struggle, and does now need to disarm. But you cannot deny the IRA the right to assemble and support Sinn Fein.
http://sinnfein.org/
No one ever talks about the orangmen and the many they have killed.
Right on!
Its plain that the IRA are nothing but terrorists and gangsters now that they have no excuse to continue with their 'struggle'. Demographics, the ballot box and a booming Irish economy wil see to that. Catholics, y'see, they breed like...Catholics [or Palestinians, to which this somewhat relates...] The romantic notions of Irish Americans are very sweet until they goes beyond the Guiness and the Joyce.
Telling the IRA to "DISBAND" is different than "Disarm"
>The IRA killings was a response to British Murders and Assinations that had been going on for hundreds of years.
B.S.!
The killings are their m.o. for silencing anyone who dares to oppose their marxist and criminal activity. They try to color this with a green republican face, but their primary aim is to turn Ireland into another Cuba.
They'd off you in a second if they thought you had the goods on them.
You can not compare the Irish to those 6th century goons in the middle east. Not to make light of the situation but at least the Irish guy can blow up something and go back to the pub, unlike these fools blowing themselves up :-)
Terrorist sympathizers sicken my stomach.
I don't care who people assemble to support. But when they commit acts such as these to achieve their ends, they lose any and all credibility.
If the leaders of Sinn Fein had any brains in their collective skulls, they'd condemn these brutal acts. What they're doing today is no different than with the Islamofascists and their "supporters".
I am worried that ordering the IRA to disband (Which London has also done) Will only worsen things.
It will just give the IRA one more cause to use. Its own survival.
When backed into a corner, it will do anything to surivive.
That is true with all things.
Hah! You've got a point! (and I'm 1/3 Irish, myself...)
Okay, I really need to get to class!
You are a troll.
The Irish government wants the IRA to disband. As Happygal (of Wexford, Ireland) has noted - the one thing that unites every other political party in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland is hatred for Sinn Fein / IRA.
Ivan
From today's WSJ (subscription only) ...
It is no wonder, therefore, that Messrs. Adams and McGuinness have assumed that they could get away with anything. Yet even after September 11, they have been largely exempted from the full rigors of the anti-terrorism consensus. This anomaly must be rectified: Sinn Fein/IRA is a viciously anti-American movement whose closest foreign collaborators include the PLO (Arafat is a particular hero to republicans); the Colombian FARC (to whom it has supplied urban warfare techniques in exchange for cash to fund its rise to power in the Irish Republic); Castro's Cuba; and Hugo Chávez's Venezuela (where many IRA men, including a close relative of Gerry Adams, hang out). Significantly, one of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's lieutenants gave an interview recently to Time magazine in which he cited Sinn Fein/IRA's success as the model for the Iraqi insurgents' admixture of political and military action.
Sinn Fein/IRA was in the vanguard of opposition to giving U.S. military aircraft landing rights at Shannon International Airport during the Iraq war -- a privilege that would end if it entered an Irish coalition. Its policy documents have historically been hostile to private property and now advocate an increased capital-gains tax on owners of multiple properties and a 50% tax band for those who earn over €100,000. They also want a rethink of the role of multinationals in Ireland. U.S. investors beware: The combination of official and unofficial Mafia-style taxes will make a Sinn Fein/IRA-run Ireland a profoundly bad return on your money.
The second Bush administration is increasingly sensitive to the shift in Irish opinion. It now seems certain that Mr. Adams will not come within a hundred miles of the White House for the annual St. Patrick's Day party. Instead, invitations have gone out to the sisters of Robert McCartney, who have launched a campaign for justice that has already won the heart of southern Ireland. But an even more public rebuff is now required for republicans. One of the most popular women in Ireland today is Ann McCabe, widow of a southern Catholic police officer slain by the IRA in County Limerick in 1996. She has been determined that the killers do not benefit from the early release schemes of the peace process. She is no less deserving of an invitation to the White House. And at a political level, Sinn Fein/IRA should go back on the State Department's list of proscribed terrorist organization
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