JOHN THE OBSCURE ™
By John Ruch
© 2007
Terrorism Works
Today,
limited self-rule returns to Northern Ireland apparently for good in the wake
of a historic agreement between archenemies—the conservative Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin, the political
front of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Like many who have
closely followed—and admired—the Northern
Ireland peace process over recent years, I
knew that the only obstacle to this day coming was willpower. Unlike many, I
thought that would take the passing of the aging, recalcitrant DUP leader Ian
Paisley. I’m happy to be wrong. I sense that this time, the British government
won’t manufacture another spy scandal and that neither side would seize on it
if they did.
It’s an
astonishing turnaround for a country that just a few decades ago became a snakepit of terrorism, partisan guerrilla combat, religious
warfare, occupying colonial troops and the sort of parochial tribalism that
could quaintly call the whole thing “the Troubles.”1 Sinn Féin and the DUP coming together in essentially a
power-sharing government is a cause not only for celebration and
congratulations, but of wonder. Peace coming out of such small-town death and
bitterness looks like the key to many rusty locks in places like
Israel/Palestine.
There is,
of course, another lesson that will receive far fewer golden tones today:
Terrorism
works.
Northern
Ireland did not get to this point because
Bono pranced about waving a flag. It’s because the IRA in all its forms and
factions, and the Provos
in particular, won a war of terror against far superior forces.
A united Ireland
remains a dream (or nightmare, if you’re a loyalist). But the main issues
behind the Troubles have been resolved in the IRA’s favor: civil rights for the
Catholic minority, and an end to the British occupation and the most onerous
elements of British rule.
This is no
coincidence, and everybody in Northern Ireland,
at least, knows it. Until just a couple of years ago, you could still buy lapel
pins praising IRA snipers in Sinn Féin’s online
store. For that matter, you can still buy an “IRA: Undefeated Army” T-shirt
where the lettering is a photo of Volunteers with balaclavas and Armalites.
The IRA’s
terror campaign scared the crap out of England.
A few token stories may be bandied about today (or more likely, recollections
of the Real IRA’s anti-peace-process Omagh bombing,
the worst of the Troubles). Here’s one that won’t: The IRA assassinated one of
the right-wing looney twin brothers who founded “The
Guinness Book of World Records,” which sounds like a bizarre record in itself.
Ross McWhirter had offered a £50,000 reward for info
on IRA bombers when an IRA cell in London
gunned him down in 1975.2
The Provos blew things up, shot things
up, innovated with the despicable proxy bombs and killed a lot of innocent
people. And it worked. Just ask the British agents who tried to fight back by
supporting loyalist terror groups (and were maybe even behind some IRA
outrages, too, as history may confirm). I don’t like what the use of terror
says about humanity; I like even less the fact that terror is often the only
thing governments and citizenry will listen to. It’s merely descriptive:
Terrorism works.
Terrorism
worked in Northern Ireland; in Israel, where it may be the only factor that’s
kept Palestinian hopes alive; in Libya, where it first got Al-Gaddafi props in
the Arab Middle East, then in Washington and London when he graciously
renounced such naughtiness; in the Colonies, when pulling something like the
Boston Tea Party wouldn’t get you a lawyer-free ride to Guantanamo;
in Japan, when the US introduced nuclear war against civilians as a way of
throwing ashes on the fire of World War II.
It worked
in the US on
Sept. 11. The Bush administration waited a while, then
announced a military strategy known as “shock and awe”—that is to say, a
perfectly succinct definition of terrorism, the very thing we supposedly were
making war upon. (The “shock and awe” military theory is partly drawn from Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.3) Terrorism is the tool of those who aren’t strong
enough to destroy you, used to make you destroy yourself instead. And thus,
after years of pointless freak-out war, America
has shown the world it really is the war-mongering, country-occupying,
human-rights-violating monstrosity the extremists say it is. GW fell for it as
easily as he would for “pull my finger.” Terrorism works.
A “Global War on Terror”? You might as well declare a war on
arithmetic. Or, to highlight the hypocrisy, on war itself.
Remember how well the war to end all wars worked out? Granted, the occasional
impossible but laudable “war” can be worthwhile to raise attention, like the
War on Poverty in a capitalist society that requires poverty to function. But
there’s just too much irony here; if America
was really fighting a global war on terror, it would be fighting itself.
And what
good is war going to do anyhow? As terrorism historian Walter Laqueur has said, “Terrorism and guerilla warfare have a
history dating back many centuries, quite possibly one that predates the advent
of conventional warfare.”4 As our war itself proves, you can’t stamp
out terrorism by force; you can only adopt the tactic yourself.
Meanwhile, Northern
Ireland is going where everything’s A-OK
among friendly neighbors with its own version of “Sesame
Street.”5 There are still stray IRA
splinter groups and loyalist paramilitaries to disband, but Sinn Féin’s gift shop is already making it clear that martyred
hunger striker Bobby Sands, not masked car-bombers, is
going to be the face of history. Sinn Féin and DUP
ministers have already released their first-ever joint statement: a letter of
condolence to victims of the Virginia Tech shooting, America’s
brand of personal terrorism, that commented, “We fully
understand the impact that events like this can have on a community and the
population as a whole.”6 And the undefeated army isn’t the one
fighting alongside us in Iraq.
Terrorism
works.
1 Trivia note: This rare moment
of Celtic understatement was apparently borrowed by the Dungeons & Dragons
game’s favored campaign setting of the Forgotten Realms. The setting’s backstory includes a historic event in which all deities
were forced to walk among humans in the form of mortal avatars and duke it out,
resulting in the deaths of gods, apocalypse-level changes to human society and
an entire rearrangement of how prayer and worship work. This brouhaha is drolly
called the Time of Troubles. (“Forgotten Realms Campaign
Setting,” Ed Greenwood, Sean K. Reynolds, Skip Williams and Rob Heinsoo, eds.)
2 BBC
News “On This Day” column at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/27/newsid_2528000/2528787.stm.
3 See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe.
4 In “Voices of Terror:
Manifestos, Writings and Manuals of Al Qaeda, Hamas, And Other Terrorists from
Around the World and Throughout the Ages.”
5 “NI Awaits Its Own Sesame Street,” April 27, 2007, BBC News at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6598935.stm.
6 “NI
Leaders in US Massacre Tribute,” April 17,
2007, BBC News at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6563801.stm.
Posted May 8, 2007.
JOHN THE OBSCURE
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