IRA lay down arms

The LAST thing I'd want to appear around here is pro-UK in the Northern Ireland mess.

BUT.

A concern that doesn't really seem to get much airing in the American press is that, at present, the residents of Northern Ireland are British subjects. They are entitled to the protection of the Crown.

At the very LEAST, any proposal to transfer sovereignty over Northern Ireland from the Crown to the Republic of Ireland should be supported by a plebiscite.

However, since about two thirds of the population of the six Northern Counties is Protestant, such a vote to leave John Bull and join Eire is highly UNLIKELY to succeed. That, after all, is why the island was partitioned in the first place.

At the moment, reunification is just not possible without riding roughshod over the human rights of the majority.

 

That is not entirely correct. Per the Good Friday Agreement (see above),

The potential for a united Ireland is also addressed in the Good Friday Agreement.

N.B. In any compromise each side has to be willing. To achieve the Good Friday Agreement, the people of the Republic of Ireland amended Articles 2 and 3 of their constitution.

Amended, they grant the right to be "part of the Irish Nation" to all of those born on the island of and express a desire for the peaceful political unification of the island subject to the consent of the people of Northern Ireland Northern Ireland. Prior to 1999, Articles 2 and 3 made the claim that the whole island formed one "national territory", which was offensive to unionists.

 

Which is exactly what the IRA has been trying to do.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for groups that plant bombs in toy stores just before Christmas.

 

Wow, Blair gave them everything then..... I didn´t know about the existence of such clause. I guess the catch (if any) is on who can call the referendum, and if other referenda in Britain are required or Parliament approval, etc... Is that why they did continue on all these years? It was after Good Friday agreements they planted that bomb in Omagh, a butchery of kids, and inocent bystanders. Disgusting. What ELSE did they want?

Population dynamics are often unpredictable. If the area becomes pacified and life is normalized to a certain extent then people from other countries or even from GB may like to reside there, and that referendum may never take place. Moreover, if the emigration trend continues on the most likely referendum to take place could be one to decide on an Islamic Republic of Eirestan.

 

Riding Roughshod

Tony Blair gave them nothing. The Good Friday Agreement was negotiated by governments of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom and eight political parties representing unionist, loyalist, nationalist, republican and cross-community constituencies in Northern Ireland. The Clinton Administration was a positive influence on the negotiations.

The Omagh bombing was not the work of the Provisional IRA. An anti-agreement dissident group perpetrated it. Ian Paisley's DUP was also anti-agreement and did not participate in the negotiations.

 

Charles,

Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom whose government’s head is Tony Blair. If Ireland gains sovereignty of the territory or at least the written chance to gain it, it would be only because the British government whose head is Blair gives it away disregarding how many associations and parties particpated in the negotiations. On top of that it was only recently that Gerry Adams publicly demanded IRA stops its killing spree, which it was a strategic move. It was not that the guy suddenly realized that killing innocent people is wrong.

OK, still, what ELSE did they want? Why were the perpetrators against the agreement? Is it that they realized massacring kids works and they became more ambitious and wanted more and faster?

I think Arabs justify in a similar manner what took place in NYC on 9/11. A terrorist here is a freedom fighter somewhere else.

 

What justifies the assumption that the weapons that were "put beyond use" constituted the provisional IRA's entire inventory? How can people be certain that terrorism won't start up again whenever the IRA becomes frustrated that events aren't evolving their way?

I'm inclined to agree with Nosborne, I think.

What Charles posts is definitely good news. It seems to be an indication of a change in political strategy for the IRA, accompanied by a good-faith gesture. (In the current 'war on terror' climate, a terrorist campaign is probably counterproductive anyway.)

But I'm not sure that I would read more into it than that. It's a step in the right direction, but it's hard to say how significant it will turn out to be.

 

I don't wish to seem more knowledgeable than I actually am. I did not know that the agreement requires a popular vote.

But be VERY careful with the idea that guaranteeing UK or Irish nationality, or both, as a free choice somehow answers the issue of transferring sovereignty. It doesn't. DUAL nationality is undesireable for a number of reasons, but that's not my point.

Governments do not control their populations only; they also control the use of the land upon which the population resides. In the event of unification, UK subjects who choose to remain UK subjects will become de facto aliens in their own homes. Their options will be to either embrace the Irish government, thus becoming an equally de facto religious minority (which they are not at the moment) subject to the likely none-too-tender mercies of a vengeful majority or leaving everything behinds and emigrating to the UK.

Or, they could stay and "fight for their rights." Sound familiar?

Ireland is an intensely Catholic country where an extremely intolerant brand of Catholicism exercises a LOT of political influence.

 

It seems to me that if London decides to transfer soverignty over the heads of the Protestants, there might be some kind of unilateral declaration of independence among the unionist militants. While that probably wouldn't be very effective in creating a viable state on the ground or in terms of international recognition, it could easily lead to a Lebanon-style civil war, more intense than anything seen from the IRA.

So I'm not sure that the Irish Republic really wants a soverignty change either. They are enjoying some new found prosperity right now and Dublin has become one of the cooler cities in Europe. They don't really need a full-tilt terrorist campaign blowing it all up, and a full-scale military mobilization to try to put it down. But anti-British feeling is so deeply ingrained in Irish nationalism, and retains enough influence in Irish politics, that they feel that they have to go through the motions and say the right things.

There's a strange self-contradiction in this Ireland stuff:

Somehow the Catholic/nationalist blueprint expects the Protestant/unionists to go meekly and that the Irish Republic security apparatus will handle them all easily. In other words, the whole thing is predicated on the Protestants being exactly what all the rhetoric insists so loudly that they are not: peaceful people who don't like violence and don't want trouble.

But... what chance are the small, ill-equipped and unpracticed Irish Republic forces going to have if all the nationalist rhetoric about the unionists' violence turns out to be true? What if the unionists turn out to be as nasty as the IRA? The Republic's total military strength is less than the peak forces that the British had assigned to NI. The Republic will have to commit their entire military and then go into a full war mobilization indefinitely.

 

Yes, but unfortunatly the Church of England there really has the same traits. But I think that is the norm for people who have extreme faith. Alot of people interpet there religion to mean everyone else is an immoral idiot, which is way off base. I tell people here all the time that I believe in god (im catholic), and I dont know what god wants of us, BUT i do have a good vibe for what god dosent want, like throwing deer blood on people at abortion clinics, or tieing homosexuals to post and beating them to death. Surely not what god wants. That, to me, is the lesson both sides need to learn in N.Ireland.

I have to say, that this is the most civil, and impartial conversation I have ever seen on this topic, and everyone here should feel pretty good about it.

 

It seems to me from history that this sort of conflict is generally finally resolved when one of two things happens:

1) the populations themselves become so wearied of the fight that they will no longer tolerate or support the fighters in their midst and, more importantly, those who provide financial support for the leaders of the "movement" finally decline to continue doing so. This means, "Respect the war. Let them fight it out for as long as it takes." Horrible. Bloody. Lots of sickening scenes featuring dead children and bombed out houses. And ever greater grows the hate and brutality until, at last, it collapses of its own weight.

This is how England finally got through her Civil War, for example. But the NI populations and those outside providing support show few signs of the kind of complete exhaustion that would bring about the end of the conflict.

or

2) forced emigration. Whichever country keeps or obtains sovereignty requires every resident to swear an oath of loyalty to the government promising not to attempt or assist in any attempt to overthrow the government by violent means. Any who refuse, and there would be tens of thousands, are "repatriated" (translation: forceably deported ) to the UK or the Republic of Ireland. Then, if NI stays with the UK, you build a wall. So awful is this approach that it is actually one of the international law definitions of genocide. It is also the device used by the United States in ending the Indian Wars and was, and is, presently the policy of the Israeli government for dealing with non-Jewish Palestinians. It's also called, "ethnic cleansing".

The second approach has the additional disadvantage that the perpetrators can be easily identified.

But as President Carter demonstrated very convincingly indeed, anything like a settlement where no compromise is possible (think Jerusalem and the Palestinian Right of Return) is doomed to fail and is a waste of breath.

 

All I can say is, there you go again. For a lawyer, you are pretty sloppy with your “facts.”

What is your point? You said that the residents of Northern Ireland were British subjects. That is not necessarily the fact. I offered the clarification because your statement was not precise. Choice of citizenship has already been agreed upon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4079267.stm

Please substantiate your claim about extremely intolerant Catholicism in Ireland.

What do you mean “Catholic/nationalist blueprint?” Are you calling the Good Friday Agreement the “Catholic/nationalist blueprint?” As noted in this post and elsewhere in this thread, the vast majority of all of the people on the island were in favor of the agreement, as was the governments on all sides.

 

I said that if the day ever comes when the UK government transfers soverignty, whether or not a thin majority of the Northern Ireland voters votes for the transfer, then the Irish Republic might find itself facing an IRA-type security challenge from the unionist militants, but with far fewer military and police resources than the British have had to deal with it.

 

No, Charles, I wasn't being sloppy with my "facts". I was reasoning from basic principals of public international law, specifically the well known but largely impossible "right of self determination". A plebiscite would almost certainly be required even if the GFA DIDN'T mention it.

Nor do you justly accuse me of bias. I am fully aware of the long, brutal history of the English occupation of Ireland and the Irish resistance to that occupation. The argument I was making concerned what would happen to the present Protestant majority in the event of unification of the island. I am very much aware that the present Catholic minority suffers under similar burdens now.

Indeed, that is why I am so pessemistic over the IRA disarming. Just a little while ago, the Protestants staged their celebratory march through Catholic neighborhoods with the predictable results. There remains entirely too much hatred and bitterness on both sides for any sort of peaceful compromise to survive.

 

It’s not peculiar to this tread. Your sloppy “facts” have become a trend.

“Nosborne fact” - You said the Central Intelligence Agency admitted to the murder of Savador Allende.

Fact - I’m still waiting for you to substantiate that claim.

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=202440#post202440

“Nosborne fact” - You said Israeli Arabs are not permitted to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces.

Fact - Israeli Arabs are permitted to serve in the IDF.

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19565&highlight=druze


“Nosborne fact” – You said “I have HEARD that his [Jerry Falwell’s] organization republished and now distributes the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", as anti-Jewish an act, short of violence, as I can think of.”

Fact – Absolutely not true.

“Okay. I stand corrected. Apparently the republishing is the work of a Colorado Church of Christ minister named Rev. Pete Peters. It was Falwell who stated that the Anti-Christ has been born and is a Jewish male.

My apologies to the Rev. Falwell and his supporters.”

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14755&perpage=30&highlight=protocols&pagenumber=1

I don’t accuse you of bias at all. Although you claim to be a student of history, you make too many wrong assumptions, for me not to question whether you have truly taken the time to gain a basic knowledge of the situation.

Your pessimism is simply not relevant. Northern Ireland is on the glide slope toward returning to the processes of the Good Friday accord.

 

I think that's probably one of the motivating factors for the European Union's "ever closer union" rhetoric. The United Europe dream arose among a weary population living among the ruins left by two world wars in a single generation. They hoped that by submerging age-old nationalist rivalries and hatreds under a new pan-European identity and allegiance, peace would finally come to their very troubled part of the world.

So maybe the European Union can help bring peace to Northern Ireland by helping everyone in that atavisic place see themselves first and foremost as Europeans while their "Irish" and "British" identities recede in importance.

Someday that stuff may be no more interesting to people in Belfast than the burning question in Kansas City of whether one is a Missourian or a Kansan. Americans like their particular states, but state identities don't challenge the broader American identity. (150 years ago that might not have been true.) The day might come when Northern Ireland votes to align with Dublin not because of "green" tribalism, but because the Republic has lower property taxes. The day might come when religion is a matter of personal choice and nobody else's business.

And that illustrates the exact reverse of what I just wrote above. The rest of this post is going to explore that a little.

Sometimes I get the impression that tribalism is stronger here among Irish-Americans than it is in Ireland. Many Irish-Irish are tired of all the bullshit and just want it to go away. But the denizens of the countless Irish bars in the US have kind of treated the IRA-British struggle as if it was a football game on TV. They could cheer for their side and contribute financially to their "boys", all with perfect safety and without having to sacrifice anything. I guess the payoff was their sense of belonging to something a little more close to home and tangible than assimilating completely into a generic American identity offered them.

Ironically, Osama bin Ladin and al-Quaida performed a real service in one respect. On 9-11, all the American IRA supporters were shocked out of their shoes. Suddenly every Irish bar was flying an American flag. Everyone was suddenly on the "War on Terrorism" train. So contributing to Noraid just wasn't cool any longer. I think that the worldwide reaction to 9-11 is probably a major factor behind the IRA's recent change of strategy. Their bombings and shootings suddenly made their traditional supporters uncomfortable.

The Irish-Americans may be a lesson for those hoping that the EU will defuse nationalist hatreds all over Europe (the Balkans are where they really fester). If the new over-arching identity is too abstract, too nebulous, too idealistic and perhaps too foreign, then people might opt for some more tangible identification closer to home. (That's why "the human race" or "the planet earth" remain pious talk that don't really create much passion. Now if space-aliens attacked the earth, that would change overnight and we'd all be brothers and sisters.)

Here in the United States, a major subtext underlying American politics is the assimilation of various subgroups into the national identity of a continental sized country created by immigrants.

My observation is that the Republicans are the party of those who identify themselves first and foremost as Americans, while the Democrats are the political resort of hyphenated-Americans.

So it's kind of ironic that the most "Euro" Europeans all seem to favor the American Democrats, without recognizing that the Democrats are the party composed of all the lumps that haven't melted down in the melting pot. Maybe that's because Democrats come at them not as American nationalists, but as international intellectuals who are above all that national identity stuff, who want to find common cause with European intellectuals against the herd.

What the Europeans don't see is that the Democrats seem to be above all the American national identity stuff because in many cases they identify with something more local and tangible (race, class, gender, non-mainstream religion, ethnic-origin or whatever), while the Europeans are busily trying to heat up their own melting pot, hoping to get Europeans to move beyond all that divisive and in their case sometimes violent local-identity stuff to a new overarching identity as Europeans.

In Europe the nations are local, tangible and often tribal, and the repudiation of nationalism represents the overarching community. In the United States nationalism represents the overarching community, and to repudiate nationalism is to opt for something more local, tangible and tribal.

That might be one of the basic reasons why Americans and Europeans don't understand each other.

 

Charles, there's something I really don't quite understand.

I get the distinct impression that you somehow believe that the IRA's terrorist tactics are somehow justified by the awful history of the English occupation of Ireland and were offended at the very beginning by my scepticism, my absolute unwillingness to believe that the IRA or its sympathizers can be trusted in any of their acts or words.

What surprises me most is that you attack me for admitting that I stated that a plebiscite would be necessary based on international human rights law rather than the GFA. When it turned out that the GFA embodies the same requirement, in the interests of honesty, I stated that I didn't know that.

Now, you don't disagree that a vote is necessary; you just don't like the fact that I consider it obvious from the law itself.

Why?

The real point is that such a vote could never result in a decision for reunification, at least, not until the Catholic population grows to become the majority.

The only explanation I can think of is that you want me to somehow accept your position that the IRA's disarmarment is somehow indicative of their being responsible statesmen and that theirs is a legitimate political voice.

Charles, that's just nonsense. The IRA is made up of criminal thugs whose power and position depend on their continuing use of terror which they try to dignify by calling it an ongoing struggle. There is little, if any, difference between the IRA and al Quaida.

And I believe that every IRA member should end on the gallows and every IRA supporter should end in prison.

If it is any comfort to you, I feel exactly the same way about the Protestant militia in Northern Ireland as well.

 

I hope so too. At both sides of the ocean.

That will give them time enough to understand that individual rights, like the right to live, are above any alleged collective or national right.

I don´t see any difference between those IRA terrorists, and Osama or the Taliban.

 

No I do not condone terrorism by the IRA nor anyone else. I do believe that the development of the modern Provisional IRA is in large part due to the Unionists’ violent response to the Catholic civil right movement of the 1960s and 70s.

You, along with others, have approached this discussion from its beginning with what I consider a condescending tone. Yet, it appears to me that you and the others have not taken time to develop a basic understanding of the troubles.

Ah, now you’re getting somewhere. Ultimately, this is about one person – one vote. The first step is restarting the processes of the Good Friday Agreement. Currently, Ian Paisely’s DUP refuses to share power with the elected representatives of Sinn Fein. Whether Sinn Fein is the IRA is a whole other debate.

I disagree, I think comparing the Provisional IRA to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden is a poor analogy. Though not exact, I think a comparison with MK and Nelson Mandela is more appropriate.

Really? Would you at least allow for a trial? How very unACLU of you.

Do you? What is the Protestant militia? Again, let’s try for some precision in language. Are you talking about:

Orange Order?
The Policing Service of Northern Ireland (ex-Royal Ulster Constabulary)?
The Royal Irish Regiment (ex-Ulster Defense Regiment)?
The Ulster Defense Association?
The Ulster Freedom Fighters?
The Ulster Volunteer Force?
The Red Hand Commando?
The Royal Parachute Regiment?

Can you bring yourself to call them criminal thugs?