Daithi in New York has tracked Counterpunch’s Harry Browne countertake on who the criminals are. There are mild echoes of this take in this lengthy comment piece by Times of London columnist Simon Jenkins. Another strange case of left meets right?His analysis is harsh:
Mr Adams has every reason to feel aggrieved. He has laboured long, if not hard, to bring Irish republicanism into the political fold. His conversion from terrorist to ballot box politician has been hailed by London, Dublin and Washington. The ostensible reason for this week’s snub was no more than a bank raid, of which Mr Adams appears to have known nothing, and a dime-a-dozen killing in the Short Strand enclave of Belfast. What is new?
He reckons this is just one in a long line of occasions when the outside world has tried to interfer with Northern Ireland:
Outsiders have been meddling in Northern Ireland since the start of the present troubles 35 years ago. It got nowhere. Presidents Clinton and Bush have visited the Province and been photographed. Emissaries such as George Mitchell and Richard Haass have come and gone. Nobel prizes have been distributed. The de facto “ceasefire” negotiated by the Major Government has held, but most observers felt that by the early Nineties the lust for violence was waning.
Though in condemning Blair, Bush and dozens of other outsiders, he doesn’t let the IRA off the hook:
Paramilitary bosses were ageing and their members grown rich on cross-border smuggling, robbery and money laundering. As charted last month in The Times, the IRA is regarded by MI5 as “one of the largest and richest organised gangs in Europe”.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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