Would that my old friend Brian Heran (pronounded Breean in Irish andwith his
last name somewhat altered), were still around to take on Ms Doud's opinion
of the historic role of the IRA, in this splendidly written and hopeful
piece on Northern Ireland. Alas.
If anyone out there sends me a suitable response, and I hope that happens,
I'll send it out. -Ed
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/the-wearing-of-the-green.h
tml?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120701>
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/the-wearing-of-the-green.ht
ml?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120701
The Wearing of the Green
Maureen Dowd
NY Times: July 01, 2012
<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/09/16/opinion/Dowd_New/Dowd_New-ar
ticleInline.jpg>
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
<javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/07/01/sunday-
review/01Queen.html','01Queen_html','width=530,height=630,scrollbars=yes,too
lbars=no,resizable=yes')>
Istvan Banyai
MAYBE Sarah Palin was right.
In the HBO movie "Game Change," about the 2008 campaign, John McCain's
strategist Steve Schmidt was appalled when he realized that their vice
presidential pick thought Queen Elizabeth, rather than the prime minister,
was actually running the show in Britain.
But with David Cameron growing smaller and the queen growing larger, Palin
seems prescient.
In leading a reconciliation with Ireland, reaching a white-gloved hand
across the bloodstained tide, the queen has restored a luster dimmed by her
1992 "annus horribilis" and her insensitivity after the death of Princess
Diana.
Her elevation to Ireland's Prodigal Mother began last year when Liz, as The
Irish Daily Star calls her, arrived for a four-day visit to the Irish
Republic - the first by a British monarch in a century - wearing an emerald
green suit, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting not reading "Fifty Shades of
Grey" but wearing 40 shades of green.
The Irish immediately understood that the queen meant business. In this
island of myth, superstition and symbol, where the past is always present,
she urged both sides "to bow to the past but not be bound by it."
The mood was tentative at first, but the ice broke when the monarch bowed
her head at the Garden of Remembrance, the sacred ground for Irish patriots
who died battling for independence, spoke some Irish, and visited Croke
Park, the site of the 1920 Bloody Sunday, when 14 Irish civilians died after
British forces opened fire on them.
By the end of that visit, some Irish were waving Union Jacks and fondly
calling her Betty on Twitter.
The skunk at the emotional garden party was Sinn Fein, which misread the
national mood and maintained a sullen distance from the queen. (Sinn Fein
lived up to its name, which translates as "We ourselves.") Gerry Adams, the
party president, and Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister for
Northern Ireland - both former capos in the I.R.A. - soon realized they had
missed an opportunity to milk an opportunity.
After all, as one top Irish journalist told me, "These are guys who would
take the eye out of your head and say you'd look better without it."
They were also eager to exploit the economic recession, which has helped
their poll numbers spike in the Irish Republic, and realized they had
misplayed the queen's visit and needed to assuage their new, more moderate
supporters.
So when the queen, the commander in chief of the British armed forces,
visited Northern Ireland this past week as part of her Jubilee celebration,
McGuinness, the former I.R.A. commander, was ready to embrace this woman he
had spent his life fighting, first violently and then politically.
It certainly took courage for McGuinness and the queen to confront the
"rough beasts" who would cry treason in both their camps. But it also suited
them to disguise pragmatism as principle.
So their historic - and hopeful - handshake on Wednesday at a charity art
exhibition at a Belfast theater had to be elaborately choreographed and
minutely negotiated.
The queen had to move past the 1979 murder by the I.R.A. of her cousin Lord
Mountbatten and his 14-year-old grandson, who died when the boat they were
on off County Sligo was blown up. McGuinness, who was a leader of the I.R.A.
in nearby Derry for some of the '70s, had to move past the 1972 Bloody
Sunday horror there, when British forces gunned down 14 innocent civilians.
(The British government official report on the massacre alleged that
McGuinness "was probably armed with a Thompson submachine gun.")
The queen took another symbolic step past the Troubles by making her first
visit to a Roman Catholic Church in Northern Ireland.
A mesmerized country watched with a sense, as one TV commentator put it, of
"My goodness, me." There was a cascade of the words unthinkable,
unimaginable and - for dead-enders - unspeakable. The queen, gracious once
more in a green suit and hat the color of bright spring shoots, offered a
gloved hand and warm smile to the former guerrilla.
McGuinness spoke Irish to the queen, a Gaelic blessing translated as
"Goodbye and Godspeed." Afterward, getting into his car, he assured
reporters, "I'm still a Republican" but added that the visit had been "very
nice."
In a speech in Westminster on Thursday, he said the moment could help define
"a new relationship between Britain and Ireland and between the Irish people
themselves." And "Martin and Lizzie's love-in," as the Dublin satirical
magazine The Phoenix called it, was hailed by Adams as "a very, very good
thing indeed."
"Will it be significant beyond the novelty or beyond the symbolism?" he
asked. "That's up to us."
Niall O'Dowd, the editor of New York's Irish Voice and Irish Central Web
site, was here and was struck by the utterly changed world.
"This will end Irish and British what-abouting," he told me. "What about my
suffering? Who suffered the most in this conflict? We must just say one
death was too many and all are responsible. There's no moral high ground
here."
_____
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