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Hackles raised by Rove words on North conflict

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

In an interview given to the Associated Press, Rove said that the future of the battle against al-Qaeda would look like the British military’s battle against paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
“This is going to be more like the conflict in Northern Ireland where the Brits fought terrorism, and there’s no sort of peace accord with al-Qaida saying, ‘we surrender,'” Rove was reported as saying in the interview, the content of which was released Thursday.
The precise nature of America’s war against terrorism has been under the spotlight during the Republican party’s convention in New York this week, not least because President Bush described the war as being both unwinnable, only to quickly reverse himself and state that it indeed could be won.
Rove appeared to be to be reaching for a more precise explanation as to the nature of the conflict in which the U.S. is so deeply engaged.
Comparison between the war against al-Qaeda and, by clear inference in Rove’s case, the IRA, is certain to raise the hackles of Irish Americans who view the basis of the North conflict as being far more than just a cut and dried war against terrorism.
New York attorney Frank Durkan, who chairs the Americans for a New Irish Agenda group, said that Rove’s remarks demonstrated “an abysmal ignorance” as to the nature of and reasons for the conflict in Northern Ireland.
The conflict, Durkan said, had not been all to do with terrorism.
“It has been about equality, civil rights and, ultimately, national independence,” Durkan said.
Rove’s comment also drew fire from Democratic candidate John Kerry’s campaign, not so much over the “Brits fought terrorism” part, but because the second part of it seemed to ignore the Good Friday agreement and the role of Democrats in crafting the accords.
“Karl Rove’s comments to AP today suggest that there was no peace accord between the British and the IRA,” said a Kerry spokesman.
“We’d like to inform Mr. Rove that in April 1998, the Good Friday Agreement, negotiated by Senator George Mitchell, with the tireless assistance of President Clinton, was in fact a peace accord,” said spokesman Michael Meehan.
“Unfortunately these comments are very unhelpful to the current peace process and come on the very day critical talks designed to lead to the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly and a devolved government are commencing,” Meehan added.
“I guess we now know why the president has failed to engage in the peace process for the last four years,” Meehan said.
Such criticism echoes recent assertions by Kerry that he, as president, would adopt a more hands-on approach to the process in the manner of President Clinton.
Stella O’Leary, who heads the Washington D.C.-based lobby group Irish American Democrats, said that Rove’s words were “hitting the wrong buttons” with Irish Americans.
“They are reminiscent of (former Secretary of State) James Baker’s ‘gullible’s travels’ remark which was aimed at President Clinton’s peace efforts in Northern Ireland,” O’Leary said.
Rove’s words followed strenuous efforts by the National Assembly of Irish American Republicans – the GOP’s counterpart to O’Leary’s group – to play up the involvement of the Bush administration in the quest for a final and successful conclusion to the peace process.
The Irish American Republicans secured floor time at the convention on Monday for a ground breaking address devoted to Ireland, while the party’s platform statement on the peace process was indeed longer than the Democratic one unveiled in Boston last month.
The Rove ruckus, meanwhile, came on the same day that Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal which also drew on Northern Ireland’s experiences as a template for the broader global battle against terrorism.
“There is an increasingly fashionable assumption in Europe that terrorism cannot be defeated, only appeased through a process of negotiation that concedes core elements of the terrorists’ agenda. Northern Ireland is frequently cited as proof of this assertion,” Trimble wrote in the Journal.
He went on to describe such a view as “folly” and one that would draw entirely the wrong lesson from Northern Ireland.
Asserting that terrorists had to be fought and not pandered to, Trimble wrote that the IRA had in fact been defeated, though not entirely by military firepower.
“Gerry Adams might be the most famous Irishman on the planet, but at the price of the collapse of his ‘long war’ strategy,” Trimble argued.
Trimble has been in New York this week to attend the Republican convention at Madison Square Garden.

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