By Edward
In response to growing public and political pressure to hand over the IRA members who brutally murdered 33-year-old father of two, Robert McCartney, the terrorist organization offered to "shoot" the men responsible. Uh, hello!!! You’re not quite understanding what’s happening here. As the BBC’s Mark Simpson points out though, this alarming disconnect on the IRA’s part is not surprising:
Few people in Belfast were surprised to hear that the IRA’s answer to recent problems was to reach for its guns.
After all, that is what the IRA knows best.
In spite of the peace process, it remains a terrorist organisation with thousands of weapons and, when pushed, it is not afraid to use them.
So it was no great shock to find out how the leadership responded when faced with the embarrassment of IRA "volunteers" being involved in the murder of a Sinn Fein supporter, Robert McCartney.
Instead of politics, the IRA preferred pistols.
Rather than calling on the killers to go to the police, it preferred "justice" from a firing squad.
The big surprise was that the IRA made this position public.
The greater shock is that the IRA can’t seem to appreciate how public opinion is turning against them. According to the NYTimes report:
The [five] McCartney sisters, working on instinct and grief, are demanding that the I.R.A. stop protecting the attackers – as many as 15 men, whose identities are widely known – and allow witnesses to tell the police their stories so that justice can be done.
The sisters’ boldness has galvanized the community. For perhaps the first time, the I.R.A. is facing broad and vocal dissent among its own supporters.
The killing and the sisters’ response are creating a crisis for Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.’s political party, as well as for the I.R.A.’s rank and file and its leadership, coming as it does just weeks after the group was weakened by accusations that it was behind a Belfast bank robbery that netted $50 million.
The events have added to a disillusionment with the I.R.A. that has slowly built since the 1998 peace accords. Its members, once considered heroes in Catholic neighborhoods for their role in the struggle against British rule, are increasingly seen as turning to Mafia-like crime and common thuggery and preying on the very community that formed the group’s core of support. The I.R.A., long nicknamed Ra, is now sometimes called the Rafia.
Backers in Ireland and the US are quickly distancing themselves from the IRA in the wake of the murder, and so the IRA is badly loosing the PR war and its sources of funding. On one hand, their cluelessness is a good thing. Any mistakes that accelerate their demise should be encouraged. On the other hand, this suggests the organization, which has been more or less reduced to a pitiful collection of petty criminals, is potentially very dangerous in the way a cornered rat becomes dangerous, and the McCartney sisters, as brave as they are, should be careful. They’ve potentially pushed some wrong buttons in their public rejection of the offer:
The family of Belfast murder victim Robert McCartney have rejected an IRA offer to shoot his killers.
The IRA offered to shoot those directly involved in the 33-year-old’s death after a row in a bar on 30 January, and has given the family their names.
But Mr McCartney’s cousin, Gerard Quinn, said: "I think the feeling is that to shoot and possibly kill these people is revenge and not justice.
"And revenge is not what the family is looking for."
Clearly it’s the morally right response and should be applauded, but I’m a bit short on confidence the Irish authorities are able to protect them. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
I read about this earlier. It is amazing sometimes that the IRA and Sinn Fein can be so clueless.
CNN sayeth: arrest made.
well that’s possibly one of the 15…where are the others?
The ‘Rafia are on the run. They will leave the McCartney sisters alone (fortunately) because the story’s far too big already. I suspect that the killers will be found dead at the side of a road somewhere.
They will leave the McCartney sisters alone (fortunately) because the story’s far too big already.
You’re proabably right. It’s just that I fear the current IRA doesn’t thinks as much like the previous IRA, but rather more like the thugs who had Veronica Guerin murdered. Their offer to kill the McCartney murderers doesn’t suggest their running a think tank over there.
The fact that they would rather kill the guys than turn them over suggests that they are afraid of some specific information getting out if these murderers go to jail.
Sebastian, it could also be they want to murder a couple of guys that had nothing to do with the incident to get some of their ‘made men’ off scott free.
Although the negative fallout from the McCartney case (for the IRA that is) is all very well and good, one of the points the NYT piece skips over is the effect that it has had/may have on their “overseas” support: i.e., the seemingly huge amounts of money the IRA has collected over the years (and still does, apparently) from Irish-Americans, and Irish in America to support what are fundamentally terrorist and/or criminal enterprises. In an era when “terror support networks” are widely denounced, harrassed, and, in some (too few) cases, shut down, maybe heinous examples like Robert McCartney’s murder will prompt US officialdom to finally take IRA fundraising seriously.
Of course, if the IRA had been using Islamic madrassas to collect funding, they would have been shut down long since, but there you go….
“Sebastian, it could also be they want to murder a couple of guys that had nothing to do with the incident to get some of their ‘made men’ off scott free.”
That’s possible too.
Folks may want to check out HREF=”http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1431535,00.html”>this op-ed from the Observer (via Hurryupharry).
I’ll note that sadly and unfortunately, any hope of the IRA losing its support over this would be a triumph of hope over experience – between “Bloody Friday” in 1972, the challenge from the “Peace people” in the late 1970s, shooting 17-year old carpenter’s apprentices for doing work in police stations, or the Enniskillen bombing of a remembrance day service suggest that the IRA has a hard core of support who won’t desert it. People will condemn their actions, but a few weeks later after the “other side” (be it a loyalist shooting or some remark by a Unionist or British politician), and they’ll be back to voting tribally for Sinn Fein again.
Keep in mind that the IRA (and Sin Fein) don’t recognise the laws of Northern Ireland, or the authority of the police force. The consider themselves to be the rightful authorities — that they literally are the law. This statement must be read in that context — it emphasises their legitimacy over that of the nominal NI government and police force.
And I’m really not sure about this distinction between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ IRA. They have always funded themselves through criminal activities such as bank robbery and drug dealing; they have always issued ‘punishment beatings’ and killings as they deemed necessary. There was, and I’m sure still is, genuine commitment to the Republican cause — the hunger strikers were true heros. But the IRA strategy has always been based on violence and intimidation.
By the way, if you are interested in this issue at all you should be reading Slugger O’Toole.
Bollocks — Sinn Fein.
The greater shock is that the IRA can’t seem to appreciate how public opinion is turning against them.
How’s its popularity in the US? I know Colin Quinn still speaks of them fondly, but I refuse to consider him representative of anything except maybe the Peter Principle. Those of you up Beantown-way, or in other Irish states of mind, are the IRA still getting support — whether it be verbal, political or monetary — or have people turned against it?
[I’m particularly interested in this, I confess, because I had a bet with an Irish buddy of mine a few years ago about how the IRA would be perceived in this era of newfound consciousness of terrorism.]
Ironically the one place Ireland’s full-time self-declared protectors in the US ever think to consider is…the Republic of Ireland.
But it’s great to see other Americans waking up to this (other than we lonely few here in Ireland).
The ‘establishment’ Irish American squeaky wheels who make the most noise affecting US policy on the subject have been almost completely co-opted by Sinn Fein (the IRA’s political wing).
Pressure needs to be applied to people like Pete King (R-NY) and Jim Walsh (R-NY) to get the fundraising cut off – which has made Sinn Fein the best-funded, most media-savvy political party in Ireland – and that’s beginning to destablise Ireland itself. They may hold the balance of power in the next election here.
And in order to keep the IRA sweet, the British and Irish governments have ignored the loophole that allows them to bring in American money through the backdoor in accounts in Northern Ireland.
Be watching with interest to see how the McCartneys are received back home (will they sit opposite Larry King in the chair Gerry Adams sat in 10 years ago?).
Duane above has it spot on. IRA sees itself as the ‘legitimate’ government.