Thursday, [Gerry Adams] was the guest of honor at a $500-per-plate Sinn Fein fund-raiser at the Sheraton hotel in Manhattan.
Dim-witted, sentimental Irish-Americans with more cash than brains? Delusional Marxist debutantes? Bored yuppies who were oh-so-rad in their college days? Who are these cretins? And, fools though they may have been, shouldn't they bloody know better by now? No?
Shortly after 9/11 I was sitting in traffic listening to talk radio. There was a call from a highly-supportive Brit (a retired military man, SAS or the like) who, with no anger, a little sorrow, and a great deal of tact expressed hope that perhaps now those many generous but misinformed Americans might stop sending money to Irish terrorist thugs. I was appalled when the host thanked-him-very-much but completely blew off the main point of his call. Apparently this important point is still being blown off by more than a few Americans, to our shame.
I've seen little criticism of Americans on this point, on which we deserve any amount of excoriation and abuse that the Brits might want to dish out. Though the subject has been mentioned with disgust, in passing, by a few British bloggers, I'm not familiar with any source of solid and sustained criticism from Over There. I hope this is just a reflection of my own provincialism.
(Via InstantMan.)
Addendum: I went to check Miss Jones, who has been known to rant well on this subject. To my delight I discovered that she is running a "Revoke Matthew Engel's Visa" campaign. The commentadores have even better suggestions. (PLDWSD*)
*Permalinks Don't Work Scroll Down
UPDATE: The Long Lost Boy and Emily weigh in.
Honey, read some Irish (and Irish-American) history. And grow up.
There are no "dim-witted, sentimental Irish Americans" showing up at Sinn Fein fundraisers. The dimwitted are your lot, who swallow the British propaganda line that the war in Ireland is due solely to "terrorism" funded by "misinformed" Yankee Irish whose experience of Ireland is watching "The Quiet Man" every March 17th. You're overlooking about 800 years of history, including most of what's occurred over the last 30 years.
You are so ignorant of the history of Ireland, and so convinced the the Brits are superior to the rest of the world (Americans included) that your knee-jerk reaction to the news that American Irish support Sinn Fein is to insult their intelligence and equate Ireland's oldest political party (and Northern Ireland's largest Nationalist party) with the REAL terrorists who murdered your fellow Americans on 9/11. This is emotionalism. Your declaring that Americans deserve "excoriation and abuse" from foreigners for nonexistent offenses is frankly loony.
The merest child in Catholic West Belfast could tell you what his biggest problem is, and it's not Sinn Fein, the PIRA, or "Marxist debutantes" paying $500 to nosh at the Sheraton. It's Brits who shoot down unarmed civil rights demonstrators in the streets - seen "Bloody Sunday" yet? And it's British officials who shut down an elected government over offenses that elicit no reaction when committed by the other side. (When Unionist official John Pilling was discovered to have personal data about Sinn Fein's Mitchel McLaughlin, the British response was zilch. When addresses of PSNI officers and British politicians were discovered in a Sinn Fein official's backpack, the entire peace process came to a screeching halt.)
Most American Irish do not, repeat NOT, support political violence in Ireland. British Army intelligence once estimated the portion of PIRA funding that originated in the U.S. at approximately 12 percent. Even John Hume, whose political success largely depended on dissing Republicans and their American supporters at every opportunity, estimated American monetary support for the PIRA as only a small part of the PIRA's total budget. Many American Irish work very hard to combat misinformed opinions such as yours because we want peace in Ireland, but know that peace depends on justice (to paraphrase that well-known terrorist, Pope Paul VI).
And if you think that quoting an SAS man concerning terrorism in the Six Counties scores you any points with knowledgeable people, think again - the SAS (along with other regiments in the British Army) are considered very active killers of Irish Catholic civilians by various individuals and human rights organizations in the Six Counties and abroad. Try doing a search on "SAS" + "Northern Ireland" on Google, and see what you turn up. Perhaps the talk-show host who "blew off" the SAS mouthpiece had a much better reason for discounting his opinions than you knew.
Posted by: Terry Deem-Reilly on November 10, 2002
Moira,
Your above correspondent is a one-sided moron.
Cheers,
Emily
Posted by: Emily on November 10, 2002
My dear Deem-Reilly - puerile I may be, ignorant I may be, loony I may be, but at least I can think straight enough to recognize that a thorough acquaintance with the sorry history of the British in Ireland does not logically entail an admiration for Gerry Adams, any more than considering Adams a terrorist thug logically implies a hearty support for Unionists.
Thank you for supplying that 12% figure for American bankrolling of the PIRA. My goodness gracious that's a relief. Only 12%. Nothing to be ashamed of there.
I do take your point about the likely biases of an SAS man (though I assumed that would go without saying). I was certainly not attempting to "score any points with knowledgeable people" on the SAS issue, but if a knowledgeable person should decide to comment on this post, I would be most interested in his input.
Posted by: Moira on November 10, 2002
Oh hello Emily. I was going to drop you a line - thought this might interest you. Thanks for dropping by.
Posted by: Moira on November 11, 2002
Okay, now that the Guiness has worn off, I'm better equipped to give a better response. First of all, I must apologize for my insult. It was uncalled for. Even if I disagree with Terry, doesn't mean that he (she?) deserves to be insulted.
But Terry, Ms. Breen doesn't have to be aware of "800 years of Irish history" in order to have objections to Americans funding terrorism in Northern Ireland. The fact is, most of Sinn Fein's *are* rather ignorant of the situation, have nothing to lose, and don't have to live with the consequences of what their money has paid for. See pictures of Noraid protesters holding signs that read "England out of Ireland" for proof of said ignorance.
And might I issue what I call the "Widgery Challenge": my goodness, can somebody discuss current NI politics without bringing up Bloody Sunday? It was tragic, the British government stupidly whitewashed the whole thing to save face, and nobody deserved to die that day, but for kryst sakes, it was thirty years ago, and nothing even remotely simlilar has occured since then. And the film should be seen as nothing more than storytelling. If you want to learn about Bloody Sunday, Moira - or anybody else for that matter - might I suggest you do as I have and consult official state documents, books by scholars, eyewitness testimony, and the transcripts of the current inquiry. Anybody who gets their history lessons from films is an idiot. I've seen it. Three times. There are so many outrageous innuendos in that film I almost spit at the screen.
And there was no British government response to JOSEPH Pilling gathering personal data on McLaughlin because he wasn't doing so - wrong as it might have been - as anything more than a political threat. I beg your pardon, Terry, but if you think that SF were gathering the addresses of PSNI officers for their Christmas card list, then you are one naive person. Especially as "dissident" republican groups have been known to plant bombs under the cars of Catholic police recruits - punishment for recognizing the authority of the British government, a lawful "combatant" in their minds. Who cares if scores of other Catholic recruits immediately leave their training out of fear - oh, and as a result of that big, evil, unfair bias of the British government, an equal number of Protestants have to be sent on their way because of the 50/50 recruiting requirement of the PSNI. All of this while Martin and Gerry go on the telly complaining about not having a fair say in policing.
The truth is that these days the biggest killers of Irish Catholic civilians are the IRA. They like to fancy themselves as an "army", but the truth is they, like their meathead loyalist counterparts, have devolved into nothing more than a gangster cartel. Sure, the PIRA are publicly abiding to their commitments as signatories of the Belfast Agreement, but there's nothing in the Agreement about not knee-capping your own people.
But Terry is right about quoting an SAS man about Northern Ireland. They're likely to have their judgement clouded by the bitterness of they and their colleages being threatend, spit on, pelted with bricks and bottles, and targeted by snipers on a daily basis.
Who cares how much or how little death American money has bought in Northern Ireland? One penny is one too many.
Posted by: Emily on November 11, 2002