Worthy and Unworthy Victims (From the Irish People. April 10, 1993) Dear Editor, The recent bombings in Britain in which civilian injuries and deaths occurred are to be rightfully condemned and criticized. The Irish Republican Army has been conducting a bombing campaign there for years. While its policy has been to give warnings when civilian casualties might occur, the fact that the warnings may be ill-timed or poorly delivered, or that the British may ignore or fail to relay those warnings for their own ends, leavers the margin for error unacceptably wide. The IRA has great responsibility to ensure that civilians are not targeted intentionally or otherwise in the quest for British withdrawal from the north of Ireland. Failure to do so is counterproductive in its efforts to convey the overall situation to the interested and uninformed. While the Irish in Britain have many serious grievances against the British over the years, such as the Birmingham Six, the Guildford 4, Judith Ward, etc. the events of the past week seriously weaken fair-minded persons' perceptions in deciding where to apply any moral support to such injustices in the past, present and future. I grieve for those British children who should not have died so. I also grieve for the young in northeast Ireland who just this week lost their fathers and brothers in Castlerock, where pro-British death squads struck again by killing four nationalist Catholic workmen while at their jobs. On the same day, two men were killed in Belfast, and several family members were injured by the gun blast. Sadly, this news was downplayed both in the British press and the AMerican media--another case of "worthy victims vs. unworthy victims". Fair reporting on what is really happening in both Britain and northeast Ireland and the root cause of both these tragic incidents are lost or never probed. AS long as the people are kept ignorant of the real story, these tragedies will be misunderstood because of the mis/dis-information, between commercials, that passes for news in this country. The northeast Ireland situation is a complex problem and has dominated Irish politics now for 25 years--going on 800 years. All of the efforts by the British have failed and will continue to fail. Northeast Ireland is the Central America of Great Britain. It is a population-control laboratory for the British military/constabulary/intelligence community to try to test the theories of General Frank Kitson. All present British policy, both political and military, can be found in his book "Low Intensity Operations". The late general would be well pleased with the model northeast Ireland has become in providing a unique testing ground for his philosophies. Ironically though, northeast Ireland also has the potential to unravel the British policy, given the tenaciousness of their main adversary--namely the Irish Republican Movement and its supporters in Ireland, in Britain, and here in America. It is unlikely that the events in England these last weeks will change the aims and objectives of the movement, but unless care is taken to eradicate civilian casualties occurring because of ill-defined bombing strategy in Britain, the realization of those aims may be in peril. Perhaps this should be an opportunity for the Republican Movement and its supporters to reappraise the strategy, given that no apparent advantage is observable on any concrete ground gained. The reaction at home in Ireland is understandable, but it smacks of "Peace People" all over again. And we know how the whole organization was co- opted by the British to their own advantage. The struggle in the North mow needs to be brought to the fore--and not just because of sensational headlines. The British, if they are serious must realize that they are part of the problem in northeast Ireland and, as yet, not part of the solution. Everything that they have tried has been a dismal failure, as will be future attempts by them. They cannot beat the IRA. The IRA cannot beat the British. It is by all accounts a military stalemate, culminating in a war of containment or acceptable level of violence on the British side. It is both a political and military impasse. It is now time for the peace process to be taken out of the hands of the British and put into the hands of a neutral body such as the United Nations, which has the ability and mechanisms to set into motion a train of events (round table negotiations with all groups in the conflict, control of security forces etc.) which could lead to a meaningful resolution of northeast Ireland's complex problems. This at least offers the people of northeast Ireland an alternative to 'more of the same'. The, perhaps, the tragedies of the little boys who died in Warrington last week and those who lost their fathers and brothers in Castlerock and Belfast, whether because of cold calculation or bungled warnings, need happen no more. Paul Brennan (Mr. Brennan is an escapee from Long Kesh prison in northeast Ireland and is currently residing somewhere in the United States.) 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