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June 11, 2005

Not my kind of heroes

"An incandescent courage," says commenter "ed" over at the Captain's Quarters in response to "an open letter from Gemma McCartney." But I've said it before with regards to the McCartney sisters (whose brother Robert was beaten to death at a Belfast pub in January by IRA-affililated thugs): you want to be very, very careful before you grant them beatification. There can be little doubt that the family is courageous. Standing up to the IRA is not something to be taken lightly, especially when hitherto respected Sinn Fein politicians are willing to threaten you on the IRA's behalf. But from thousands of kilometres away, it's all too easy to assume that these women are anti-violence, anti-IRA, anti-Troubles in general — and many seem to have gone ahead and done so — even though there's little evidence to support such a conclusion.

In fact, these women are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. Their anger at the IRA is restricted to the murder of their brother. They demand not the dissolution of this terrorist organization, but rather that it follow its own rules:

They [the murderers] thought they could walk away because they had the shield of the IRA. But the IRA is a more educated animal than these beasts, and true Republicans have seen through their attempts to dismiss the actions that were authorised that night. When the Army counsel held an internal inquiry the result upheld the reasoning that they must be held accountable for those actions…

Brave men, who have fought and suffered for principles, have admitted that this has become a public embarrassment to their aspirations of Truth and Justice.

The sisters also have a knack for incredibly ironic statements. As I wrote on March 11:

…the reason the incident has taken on such significance seems to be because of the impossibly quaint notion, as put forth by Paula McCartney, that the IRA men "seem to be out of control"… in 2005, mind you! ("This isn't about what the IRA has done for the community in the past," went the decidedly non-ingratiating preface to her comments.)

And now this, from Gemma's open letter: "…the Irish reputation for civility and respectability died on that night" — on January 30, 2005! Are these people completely out of their minds? I wonder what the McCartney sisters think happened to Irish civility and respectability on, say, December 3, 1992, or March 16, 1988, or, of course, August 15, 1998. Did Irish civility and respectability stay the same as its Republican Army was blowing up buildings and killing babies? Did it increase in stature?

I'm sorry for their loss, and I hope the McCartneys' crusade helps lead to a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. But if it does, it seems to me that it will be a happy accident. It will be because the sisters care more about what the IRA did to their brother than what it's done to countless innocent men, women and children in the name of a cause the McCartney family still firmly supports.

Posted by Chris Selley at June 11, 2005 07:28 PM