The McCartney sisters: Irish Times
The McCartney family's bravery seems to have done what Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, the PDs, UUP, DUP, SDLP, and Labour (both Irish and British varieties) have all failed to do for 30 years - break through to Americans with an effective narrative to Sinn Fein's [view] about what's going on in Northern Ireland.
Slowly, slowly, since the Northern Bank raid, the interest level has been picking up. After the McCartney killing it's now getting a lot of play. The duelling coverage - Gerry Adams in New York and the McCartney family at the White House - should be quite a show next week around St Patrick's Day.
Technorati brings up around 600 posts on the subject, and a surprisingly high percentage of them from Americans. It's even beginning to dawn on some American bloggers what no one in Dublin can bring themselves to say -- the only way to force Sinn Fein to act like a democratic political party is to cut off the American money.
But this will be the first time that the issue of Northern Ireland has been this high profile in the US since 9/11. Few can listen to people like Sean McManus blather his "the IRA was pushed too far" line without thinking, would we take seriously anyone going on about "al-Qaeda was pushed too far" (except as a security risk)?
Standouts include the always excellent Belmont Club (the comments are particularly good), Brainster, Obsidian Wings, Winds of Change, Dan Drezner, Crooked Timber, and others have all given the situation at least a nod - and one would expect much more next week.
One good snippet of the conversation-
Belmont's mastermind wretchard puts it in the counter-Islamic terror context:
- I think the IRA will be a ball in the side pocket. As the US acquires a generic antiterrorist capability, such as for example the ability to track laundered funds through Bulgarian-based banks the type of which the IRA wanted to buy, they incidentally acquire options they didn't have before. Moreover, the future battleground of radical Islamism may in a few years be Europe as much as the Middle East. In that respect all cats will be grey in the dark.
But another commentator on the same thread was less impressed with the efficacy of tough words from the White House:
- Let's try and maintain some sense of perspective here. What has actually happened: On their side: the IRA has robbed a bank of more than $50 million and gotten clean away with it, and a bunch of their guys have eviscerated a man in an Irish pub in front of 75 witnesses, all of whom remain too terrified to testify. On our side: The US president has told them they ought to disband. And this is supposed to suggest that the IRA are flat on their backs, about to check out, about to give up? I don't think so... The IRA's reservoir of support, as with any terrorist group including the PLO, Hizbollah, ETA and all the rest, consists of the many sympathizers and contributors it can rely on in Ireland and in the US, primarily New England. The bulk of these supporters will forgive the IRA both of the above 'actions' in a heartbeat, and indeed have already done so. The arrogance which these two IRA 'actions' display shows how utterly complacent it feels about this. In terms of fighting back, if we put some serious pressure on the IRA's sympathizers and contributors we might get somewhere, but I fail to see how a speech from GWB does this at all. If IRA sympathizers agreed already with GWB's view of the world we wouldn't have this problem. They are laughing this off in the IRA-owned pubs across the Irish republic. The IRA has faced many tougher challenges than this over the years, including Margaret Thatcher and the SAS. Achieving results against them is going to take more than some rhetoric from a US president who can't even suppress IRA fundraising in his own country. I'm a GWOT supporter, and I believe things have started to go our way recently, but it will all go wrong pretty fast if we start believing that all it takes to knock off or even wipe the smile off the face of any terrorist group with decades of murderous experience is a speech from GWB, or anyone else. It's not going to be that easy.
More realism like this may help start a real conversation in Irish America.