Peace, Promise or Pose?

The IRA terrorist: a thing of the past?

The British and Irish governments claim that the Irish Republican Army is "no longer planning violence or illegal activity of any kind" and therefore there is no obstacle to reviving the power-sharing assembly in Northern Ireland.

This is quite a remarkable statement-- and not merely because of the IRA's recent and notorious history of refusal to disarm publicly, bank robbery, extortion, kneecapping, drug dealing, supporting foreign terrorists, spying and evisceration. The elephant in the room is that if the IRA really has disarmed, renounced all violence and ceased all illegal activity, then it has no reason to exist at all and so why doesn't it prove that its thuggish campaign is over and disband?

Perhaps this claim on the part of Dublin and London is true, perhaps it is wishful thinking or perhaps it is a cynical papering-over in hopes of getting the Stormont assembly jump-started again.

That remains to be seen.