Bill Quick has an amazing story about the stupidity of the IRA:
Now, the arrogance and brutality of the IRA’s ‘hard men’ is looking to precipitate the greatest decline in SF’s fortunes in recent years. After an altercation in a Belfast pub on January 30th, 33 year-old Robert McCartney was beaten and stabbed to death. It soon became common knowledge that the murder had been carried out by a group of IRA hoodlums. Of course, there was initial denial, and then a bit of face-saving as Sinn Fein/IRA claimed to have expelled three of its members. That didn’t satisfy anyone – being booted out of an illegal mafia/terrorist organisation hardly meets the demands of justice. Now, in what is quite possibly the most bone-headed bit of PR idiocy I have ever seen, the IRA has extended the McCartney family an extraordinary offer: how about we shoot the guys responsible, and we’ll say no more? This has led to a huge furore of condemnation, as well it should, and Sinn Fein/IRA’s prospects of rejoining the power-sharing arrangement of the Peace Accords look to be postponed indefinitely.
The IRA should be opposed for Darwinian reasons, if not for brutality.