Inside Washington's Headlines

by Ken Feltman, CFCI, CAE
Employers Council on Flexible Compensation

Six brave women need a little help

Recently, former President Bill Clinton was asked where he would live if not in the United States. Thinking a moment, he chose Ireland, a good choice because few Americans dislike Ireland or the Irish.

Had he selected, say, France, which is really a very pleasant place, he would have alienated millions of Americans who would have questioned his judgment and even his patriotism. Selecting our friendly neighbor Canada would have been nearly as disastrous. These are nations on the outs with Americans. Indeed, in the run-up to the election last November, Senator John Kerry suffered criticism when voters became aware of his fluency in French and fondness for French cuisine. The quick-witted Clinton avoided the trap and made the safest selection when he chose Ireland.

Charming but divided

In fact, to be Irish-in-America today is to be quintessentially American. Likeable, helpful and fun-loving Americans of Irish descent are the best good-will ambassadors of a beautiful but divided island. Ireland’s charm has been torn apart by violence between two equally complicit mobs - between nationalists and loyalists, between haves (mostly Protestant) and have-nots (mostly Roman Catholic), between criminals masquerading as holy patriots and criminals masquerading as defenders of beleaguered victims.

That cycle of violence and intolerance may be changing - in part because opinion in the U.S. may be changing. The Irish Republican Army has raised millions of dollars through the years by relying on the misplaced but enthusiastic support of Americans of Irish Catholic background. The IRA has always been a fraud, debasing the good will of Irish Americans who long for an Ireland that never was. Indeed, if the Ireland that their forbearers left was so appealing, those ancestors would never have left for this country.

In that self-delusion, the Irish are very like most Americans whose families contemplated the tortuous trip: hope prevailed over present hardship. Anything, even the New World’s lonely and stark unknown, seemed better than the wretchedness of the homeland. But the self-delusion of Irish-Americans toward the true terrorist nature of the IRA is now unmasked and there is no quaint melancholy in it.

Even Presidents have lent Irish terrorists credibility

Politicians and priests have misled their Irish brethren. Senators and Governors, even Presidents, have given the IRA credibility. They have welcomed the cynical and manipulating leaders of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA. They have posed, smiling, arm-in-arm, with Sinn Fein’s glib apologists of terror. They have ignored reality; they have allowed the terrorists to continue to fund their bloody work.

The Irish Catholics (and, yes, the Protestants, too) have many grievances. They have been murdered, misused and mistreated by the British and each other for far too long. But that does not excuse terrorism. Nothing does. This is not a romantic whimsy. This is death, delivered by brutes, as we have learned again through the death of a young Catholic father named Robert McCartney.

He was knifed to death outside a Belfast pub in January when he happened to defend a man who offended some sodden IRA thugs. He was killed by his neighbors in a Catholic section, an IRA-sympathizing section, a Sinn Fein stronghold. He was sacrificed to idiocy, his death partly funded by Americans.

Pushed beyond fear

The murderers methodically cleaned up the blood and other evidence of their crime and warned the patrons to keep silent or suffer reprisals, even death. Indeed, three Sinn Fein candidates in a coming election were in the pub and appeared to witness the whole thing. But they told the police that they saw nothing. The conspiracy of silence, however, could not intimidate the dead man’s fiancée and five sisters, Bridgeen, Paula, Claire, Donna, Catherine and Gemma. They are about to change everything about bloody Belfast. They have been pushed beyond fear; they have stood up for justice.

Sinn Fein tried to silence them. The women would not be silenced. Then Sinn Fein offered a crazy option: it would kill four of the IRA goons who ended McCartney’s life. The six women demurred. The mindless bloodletting, they said, must stop. The murderers must be brought to justice. But justice in Northern Ireland is British and the IRA rejects colonial British justice as alien. The IRA does what terrorists do everywhere and substitutes blood for the rule of law. The six women were vilified and their families were threatened. They would not budge.

These six were not anti-IRA. The murdered man's girl friend was an IRA supporter. His sisters grew up in a staunch IRA-supporting family. They were Irish Republicans, through and through. They had grown up across the road from one of the murderers. Now, they called him what he surely is: a coward pretending to be a patriot. As Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, traveled to the United States for St. Patrick's Day festivities, so did the six women. They, not Adams, were welcomed at the White House this year. Senator Kennedy abandoned his custom of feting Adams. News organizations discussed the killing. Adams was asked tough questions. Often, his responses were awkward and he lapsed into sullen, telling silence. McCartney’s fiancée and sisters were eloquent, even when silent.

Their message is clear. The Irish are building a prosperous country but terrorism endangers the progress. Stop sending money for bloodshed. Stop funding terrorists simply because you share their ethnic background. This madness must stop. Stop it.

Grow up, the sisters said. There is nothing good for Ireland in this murderous mess. And the blood shed in Ireland makes its way to the well-meaning but stained hands of millions of Americans. Stop it.

If you contribute to Sinn Fein or to the IRA, only you can stop it. Ireland is bleeding because of American foolishness. Stop it.

The better patriots

The six women have returned to a hostile Belfast. They are realistic. They know they and their families may face further reprisals. Leading IRA officials and hangers-on have already made statements and issued warnings that, in the past, marked people for death. Still, they remain resolute.

Ireland should be proud of them. Instead, their friends and neighbors shun them. But they are the better patriots now. Ireland has everything it needs with these six women standing up for the rule of law. Eventually, the bloody mob will crumble in cowardice and shame.

Six brave women have put their lives on the line to bring an end to this continuing Irish tragedy. Ireland deserves a little realism and common sense from her sons and daughters gone abroad.

Give the Irish the peace that can lead to prosperity and, perhaps indeed, Ireland will become the best place in all the world to live. Give the Irish the chance to live and to achieve that great gift by not giving to terrorists.

Simply stop it. Six brave women need a little help.

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