Taliban Or IRA

Really, New York Times?

The Irish Republican Army of the 1960's into the 1980's is the moral equivalent of the Taliban?

Consider the religious aspects. The Taliban seeks to force its religious view on all. Convert or die. Just like the IRA back in the day, when the Catholics in the north of Ireland fought to...practice their religion in peace. Hmm. Something's amiss here.

New York Representative Peter King is being attacked because he has dared to call for investigations into radical elements of Islam in the U.S. Why, that paints all Moslems with a tarry brush, doesn't it? Just like the Congressional hearings into the Mafia painted all Italian-Americans as criminals. Hmmm. Something's amiss here.

To bolster their argument against Mr. King, the NYT has decided that he once supported a terrorist organization----the Irish Republican Army. However, before the IRA set off a car bomb in Omagh to gain revenge for the Protestant car bombs that murdered scores in Dublin and Monaghan, no one considered the IRA to be anything more than a group fighting for equal rights.

For descendants of the Irish diaspora, what the New York Times finds shocking is the very reason that they have long supported Mr. King.

From the start, dissaffected Irish who fled their homeland because of blatant anti-Catholic prejudice never let their offspring forget what the British had done to the Irish. Eamonn de Valera found a ready audience when he toured the States, seeking support for the rebellion that ended centuries of British rule. He went home with a well-stuffed wallet.

To seek to dirty Mr. King's name by claiming he supports a terrorist organization is to court the anger of a large part of the population that may not know where Great-Great-Great-Grandfather came from in Ireland, but they know the family hates England with a passion.

As far as they're concerned, it's Great Britain that's the terrorist and the IRA was only fighting back. If anyone at the New York Times had bothered to look into Cromwell, the Penal Laws, etc., they might have had a better idea of where the IRA came from and why Irish-Americans don't think of it as a terrorist organization.

And didn't Bill Clinton get Jerry Adams a visa to come to America to raise funds?

So, New York Times, you won't turn Mr. King's supporters against him and have them flooding his office with irate phone calls to stop investigating radical Islam. You may find that you've lost a few more subscribers, however.