It's About Time

At last an American administration stands up to the bully boys.

AP reports:

BELFAST, Northern Ireland Mar 9, 2005 — In its bluntest criticism yet of the Irish Republican Army, the Bush administration told the IRA it should disband following the outlawed group's offer to shoot four men including two recently expelled members responsible for killing a Catholic civilian.

Wednesday's call from the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, came a week ahead of St. Patrick's Day when, for the first time in a decade, leaders of the IRA's Sinn Fein party won't be guests of the White House.

This year, the invitations are going elsewhere to the five sisters of the IRA's most recent victim, Robert McCartney, a 33-year-old forklift operator and nightclub bouncer.

"It's time for the IRA to go out of business. And it's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say that explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated," Reiss said.

Read the whole thing here. In particular check out the account of Robert McCartney's murder and its aftermath. Maybe in Northern Ireland terrorism has again reached a tipping point. At least we can hope so and applaud a president with the political courage to go after these thugs.

Oh yeah, I just learned that Catherine McCartney, Robert's older sister who is pushing the issue of his death, is an historian.