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In my younger days, I didn't pay a lot of attention to them nor did I hero worship them like a lot of Irish Americans seemed to, but generally saw them as a positive force for independence. That changed on a trip to Ireland in 1998 (I climbed Croagh Patrick the day they signed the peace accord). A couple of days earlier in Galway, I got to talking to one of my cousin's friends, who was from Armagh, I believe, which gave me a much different perspective. She was Catholic, maybe mid 20's at the time, and told me that she and her friends and family hated the IRA more than the British or even the Protestant para groups. This was because she basically saw the IRA as a bunch of territorial bullies who put the screws to their own people - shaking them down for money, randomly administering vigilant justice, stuff like that. She thought they prolonged the troubles as a way to stay relevant. She was also angry about how the Irish in the Republic ignored the plight of Catholics in the north and how Irish American glorified the IRA.
After that, I held far more negative views, and still get annoyed when people in a bar get all misty-eyed when a band plays an IRA rebel song. I think that overall, there has been a decrease in attention to and admiration of the IRA in the Irish American community since the peace accord and especially since 9/11/01, when terrorism took on a much stronger meaning in America and in New York, which is a nexus of Irish American activity.
For the record, my grandfather fought in the Easter uprising (though not in Dublin), and later was an officer in the IRB before emigrating in 1925. He died before I was born, but I have been told that he had left Ireland both to follow my grandmother and to divorce himself of the politics of the new Irish Republic.
If you didn't mean the Irish Republican Army, then never mind.
My opinion of the IRA depends on what period of Irish history you're talking about. I certainly admire the IRA of the Irish War of Independence, less so though the IRA of the Irish Civil War. The recent IRA, since the late 1960s, is sometimes admirable and sometimes not.
My family is from Armagh and Down, came over here after WW II, and I've still many kinsmen in Ulster. And they're far more ambivalent about the IRA than loud mouthed IRA backers I run into from Kerry and Cork who never met a Presbyterian in their lives, don't really give a damn about Ulster Catholics and have romantic notions about the IRA dating back to Tom Barry.
Being an Irish American, and also believing in the unfetterd freedom of ALL peoples, I was always 100% in agreement with the CAUSE of the Irish Republican Army.
But in their methods?
Not so much.
At times I could sort of comiserate with the IRA's tactics though. I mean, really: When is England going to realize their old Imperialistic and colonial days are over. "Brittania rules the waves" my Irish arse. Who do theink they are, in these modern times, carving out a chunk of Ireland for themselves?
Get the hell out. Go home and have a wanke and eat some shephard's pie with a glass of ale, mate.
Something manyy of you probably don't know, in regards to the Ireland "potato famine" back in the late 1800s: Did you realize that, despite the blight the crops suffered, Ireland still would have had plenty enough potatoes to sustain them.
NO starvation would have occurred!
Except for one small detail: England showed no mercy for their plight and crop devastation, and refused to lower the quota of potatoes that Ireland had to export to them every month.
Some would say that people who exhbit that kind of callous disregard to other humans--and actually cause, at least indirectly, the deaths of thousands--deserve to get their butts kicked around a little bit.
Terrorist organization who at earlier times has allied themselves with the Nazis and the PLO. Many American liberals like Ted Kennedy supported it.
Not just American liberals, but also rightwingers like Peter King...That man is the biggest hypocrite in the House.
Terrorists are terrorists it doesn't matter if they are in Lebanon or Ireland, unless of course you are Peter King. I am still perplexed as to why the GOP chose a terrorist sympathiser to chair the House committee on homeland security.
"Brittania rules the waves" my Irish arse. Who do theink they are, in these modern times, carving out a chunk of Ireland for themselves?
Get the hell out.
Get out and go where? The Unionists in Northern Ireland have lived there for hundreds of years. The situation in Northern Ireland is far more complex than you evidently understand.
Not just American liberals, but also rightwingers like Peter King...That man is the biggest hypocrite in the House.
Terrorists are terrorists it doesn't matter if they are in Lebanon or Ireland, unless of course you are Peter King. I am still perplexed as to why the GOP chose a terrorist sympathiser to chair the House committee on homeland security.
I just think it's a shame that Protestants have been persecuting Catholics for centuries. To think Irish Catholics were so oppressed here in the US that they Immigrated to Mexico to fight against us in Mexican / American war of 1846. I find it ironic that most religious are the first to pass judgement!
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