Shannen: Indeed, recent British policy towards the IRA has been

pusillanimous and self-deluding… though I doubt if the adjective

“brilliant” could ever have been applied to any British policy towards

Ireland since the two islands first became acquainted. For sure, the

eagerness of the Major and Blair governments to sell Ulster Protestants down

the river, all too apparent this past few years, has written another sad

chapter in the long decline of British self-esteem.

It remains the case, however, that brave British men and women — and some

Irish ones, too — were

fighting and dying to defeat the IRA while Irish-American “useful idiots”

like Peter King were funding and supporting it. Some things are hard to

forget. There is still a street in New York City named (under the Koch

administration) after an IRA terrorist.

Many of us — including Mark Steyn — were calling the IRA by its proper

name long before 9/11. Nowadays we feel a bit like those “premature

anti-fascists” Koestler wrote about.