A Tangled Web

FRUM ON THE NORTHERN IRELAND PEACE PROCESS..



David Frum at National Review has an interesting take on the folly of the Northern Ireland peace process. Prompted by Dean Godson's biography of David Trimble, Frum concludes...



"British politicians who entered the process intending to protect the union between northern Ireland and mainland Britain--a union cherished by a large majority of the population of northern Ireland--ended by inventing a new kind of multinational structure in which Northern Ireland would somehow be jointly governed by Britain and the Republic of Ireland together.



Northern Irish politicians who entered the process to defend the union found themselves contemplating independence for Northern Ireland-and estrangement from Britain-in order to protect themselves and their interests.



The elected politicians of southern Ireland--who privately recognized that northern Ireland could never be democratically united with the South--found themselves deputized to provide democratic legitimacy for terrorists they despised.



And the terrorists themselves grabbed everything they could get, including face time with the president of the United States, without surrendering either their ultimate intentions--or their ability to revert to violence at well".