Was it needless death after all?

In just over an hour, all Irish Volunteers are to confine themselves to "purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means" in the words of today's IRA statement. There are exhaustive links and commentary at Slugger O'Toole so we'll stick here to a few side observations about the events, though we have to commend one of the Slugger analysts for this:

According to Reuters, "Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern has cut short an annual visit to the Galway Races to return to Dublin", in anticipation of the big statement. Has any nation's leader ever selflessly attended so much sport on behalf of his people?

Indeed. Check out Bertie's carefully staged man-of-the-people pose for the front page of today's Irish Times. Anyway, it's been clear for some months now that Ulster Unionism was drifting out of the Coalition of the Willing in the Global War on Terror, just as the "Global War on Terror" was drifting out of the ... what is it now ... Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism.

In the tradition of summer reruns, let us recall the heady days when David Trimble would help out Jose Maria Aznar (and by extension, Dubya) with some detective work linking the IRA to 11-M, and the time that Trimble biographer Dean Godson laid plain for Wall Street Journal readers the similarities of the IRA with al Qaeda.

No more. Trimble lost his seat, Tony Blair explicitly distinguished the IRA from al Qaeda just this week -- in what in retrospect looks like part of the latest choreography ("I don't think you can compare the political demands of Republicanism with the political demands of this terrorist ideology we are facing now"), and one wonders if some former IRA members are even offering their services as poacher-turned-gamekeeper in the hunt for the London bombers.

From this point forward, the pundits are correct that actions will speak louder than (the other) P O'Neill's words, but looking through the list of mostly predictable statements from the politicians today, we suspect that the opposition Fine Gael pick up two issues that may flare up quite quickly:

Fine Gael ... deputy leader Richard Bruton said ...[they] would also oppose allowing the IRA to organise commemorations of its past atrocities, as this would only serve to inflame sectarian tensions on an ongoing basis.

Mr Bruton added that Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny would be seeking an early meeting with the Taoiseach to establish if any concessions were granted to Sinn Féin by the Government in the run up to this statement.

Bertie, much like Dubya, prides his holliers so one does indeed wonder if there was a quick nod to some concessions that might not play so well when publicised. In the meantime, (in our last self-referral of this post), residents of Meath might want to keep an eye on all that excavation going on in their county. You'd never know what kind of interesting stuff a digger might hit!