It's a beautiful day
The Irish Republican Army has ordered its members to stand down, disarm, and use exclusively peaceful and legal means.
(I feel a little weird linking to the Beeb for that story, but I got most of my news about it courtesy of the BBC World Service, carried on my local NPR station. The Irish Times still considers it "breaking news", and I'm not convinced a link to their story will be stable.)
I can't blame the Unionists for their "we'll believe it when we see it" attitude. Tony Blair seemed to have about the proper attitude: recognizing the "unparalleled magnitude" of the statement while insisting on verifiable progress. We have been down this road before, and the IRA has insisted on unreasonable conditions before. And as we saw in Omagh, there's not much we can do about the hardliners except repudiate them.
I'm so filled with hope.
It's a different way to mean "they got my Irish up."
(I feel a little weird linking to the Beeb for that story, but I got most of my news about it courtesy of the BBC World Service, carried on my local NPR station. The Irish Times still considers it "breaking news", and I'm not convinced a link to their story will be stable.)
I can't blame the Unionists for their "we'll believe it when we see it" attitude. Tony Blair seemed to have about the proper attitude: recognizing the "unparalleled magnitude" of the statement while insisting on verifiable progress. We have been down this road before, and the IRA has insisted on unreasonable conditions before. And as we saw in Omagh, there's not much we can do about the hardliners except repudiate them.
I'm so filled with hope.
It's a different way to mean "they got my Irish up."
posted by Joe at 10:07 AM
3 Comments:
It's amazing what happened to the IRA when they've been out-terroristed by different religious extremists. Looks like when they've faced the choice of "going large or going home", they decided to do the latter.
It's a big hurdle for the Proddys to jump as well. Here's to hoping they can do it.
As a County Mayo descendant, I agree, it's a beautiful day. But only one.
I've been hoping for this day since, oh, September 12th or 13th, 2001. In part because I've been hoping that the out of touch crowd in America would back off its support once we knew what terrorism looked like over here. But I expect you're exactly right about there being a relationship to the London bombings.
County Mayo, eh? Good day, cousin!
Only one, but let's hope it's the first of many.
A gift from this Scot to both of you Irish guys...
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