From Armalite to Armani

We notice that the eagle-eyed Slugger O'Toole hasn't caught this one yet, so let's briefly comment here on a Northern Ireland-related article in the Wall Street Journal Europe. It's behind subscription, unfortunately -- an opinion piece by novelist Lionel Shriver (that's a Ms Shriver, by the way), which is a good read, if a little studiedly jaded in its basic message that the stakes are just not that big in Northern Ireland anymore, and therefore the attention that it gets from the international media is a little out of proportion. She argues that this attention feeds vanity of the IRA, in particular:

In sum, the IRA is a spoilt, self-important organization that, owing to its gruesome methods, has been paid governmental attention in gross disproportion to its numbers and, in international terms, its minor political purpose of a united Ireland. More than by Irish nationalism, its members are driven by vanity. Disarmament in the light of day, with a bunker being paved over with concrete published prosaically in the Belfast Telegraph, offends republicans' aesthetic, nay their cinematic sensibilities. The IRA is a scary, clandestine cabal, and they have to feel special.

There follows yet another strained analogy between the IRA and al Qaeda, although here it's being done as a rhetorical device rather than, as one sometimes fears from others who should know better, a serious analysis. It also sticks to the standard analysis that the main losers from a successful peace process will be the Unionists:

Given Sinn Fein's appetite for political power in the North and South, its leadership may eventually bite the decommissioned bullet in public view. If so, unionists will crow over a great victory, but republicans will have the last laugh.

We're not so sure about that. As has been pointed out, what's on the table now is not so different from what was on the table thirty years ago, but it seems that the desire for political power in the separate political entities on the island has won over the original goal of there being just a single entity. It is true, though, that these particular republicans will have a good laugh at other supposed republicans, notably the ones in power in the Republic right now -- who are already claiming that they speak for Sinn Fein and not themselves in their pronouncements on Northern Ireland.

Anyway, back to the article at hand, which concludes:

Public safety rests not in a Kodak Moment in County Meath, but in the enduring paramilitary cease-fires.

Which reminds us that the unanticipated risk of burying the stuff in County Meath, if that's where it's buried, is that the lunatics at the National Roads Authority will dig it up again as part of their plan to pave over the entire county with asphalt.