Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Bombing the Queen

Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second is about as innocuous as you can get. She is kind-hearted, soft-spoken, and an octogenarian grandmother. Yet someone has left a bomb on a bus in Ireland to disrupt the aging monarch's visit. The Irish Republican Army has by in large accepted the Mitchell Peace Plan allowing peace to largely prevail. They decommissioned almost all their weapons except for an irredentist faction of hard-liners (some who may even be unbalanced to the point that they become as nihilistic as al-Qaeda). This group that rejects any compromise terms themselves "the Real IRA" and they continue to pose a real threat far beyond the exceptional visit by the queen. I wonder if there are any terms this terror organization would accept or if they are determined to perpetuate the shedding of blood at all costs. Even Protestant stalwarts like Ian Paisley abandoned the path of arms and made real concessions but not so for this handful of violent holdovers from the bad old days. As a note, the old Provos and Sinn Fein's most militant activists were sometimes trained in Gaddafi's Libya and deadly Libyan armament somehow made its way to Northern Ireland. I would not be the least bit surprised if at least some of those still advocating violence had Libyan training.

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