IAUC Responds to the Washington Post

Dear Editors:

Peter Finn’s article contrasting Rep. King’s stances on Irish Republican Army activities in the 1980s and Muslim-Americans today highlights critical issues concerning America’s adherence, and not, to its formative principles.  It is understandable that King is viewed as a hypocrite by many.  However, it is more accurate to view his current stance as a politician’s abandonment of belief in the right of minorities to seek their full right to freedom and equality.  In this sense, Rep. King’s unwarranted attacks on Muslims generically are sadly reflective of America’s conscious erosion of its fundamental  principles of freedom in reaction to 9/11.

King’s support for the Irish struggle for freedom from British tyranny was appropriate and courageous.  Sadly, many of us in the Irish American community recognize his sweeping demonization of Muslims as perfectly consistent with his notable silence on the Irish cause for freedom since 9/11.  As Mr. Finn points out, King has not even visited Ireland since 2001.

Mr. Finn correctly notes that the so-called “Troubles” erupted when (mostly) Roman Catholics started to demand equal treatment in housing, employment and education, and that their peaceful demonstrations were violently suppressed by the authorities.  The real terrorists in Northern Ireland were the British army, MI5, and their operatives.  The common thread among the American Revolution, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the permanent state of agitation and violence in the Middle East is that they were all consequences of, and reactions to, British conquest and brutal imperialism.  We all continue to pay a steep price for historic inequities which have not yet been completely redressed.  The IRA voluntarily and unilaterally initiated the ceasefire in 1994 and has since totally decommissioned.  The progress made since then in the Irish people’s struggle for equal recognition and treatment, especially in their religious freedoms, should serve as a model for Rep. King and others to follow.

 It is too easy for people living in peace in a country like the US today, comfortably ensconced in our armchairs and freedoms, to criticize all use of arms without distinction.  However, such a view is neither realistic nor fair nor intellectually honest. Unlawful use of force is not always a criminal act or a human rights abuse; it is sometimes the legitimate act of an oppressed people.  The United States was founded by men who realized that distinction, as were the democratic governments of France, Haiti, the Republic of Ireland, and many others. We have our freedoms only because rebels like George Washington, John Barry, John Paul Jones and thousands of ordinary citizens took up the gun and fought and killed and were killed.  Rep. King was right about the IRA before 9/11 – he is wrong now about Muslims for the same reasons he was right then.