If you're Irish...

...or not, Happy St. Pat's. As holidays go, St. Patrick's Day has fairly little to do with Ireland, really. It's more a celebration of being Irish American, a blessing we extend to virtually anyone for one night of the year. I'm busy today, preparing for an orgy of corned beef, green beer (I think I'll stick to the Guinness, thanks) and song. I'll cap the evening leading the Irish sing-along at the family pub, so if you're anywhere near Shoreline, WA tonight, drop over the hill to the Cabin Tavern and join right in.

St. Patrick's Day is the hook the media uses, though, to abandon their general neglect of the news from Ireland. True to form, there's another outrage over the conduct of the Irish Republican Army, and the customary imprecise linkages of the Provos and Sinn Fein.

I don't have the time (or the inclination, really) to launch into a spirited defense of armed resistance to foreign occupation. The question, and the circumstances from which it rises, deserves more attention, though. At some point you have to come to terms with the people for whom "the Irish problem" is simply the British.

But while American politicians dodge Sinn Fein leaders on St. Pat's because the continued activity of the IRA threatens the 'peace process,' it's also well to consider that absent the resurrection of the IRA, there'd likely be no 'peasce process' at all. Nothing in the history of British tyrany in Ireland suggests they would be at the table with anyone at all about anything whatsoever absent pressure from the Provos.

Ireland unfree will never be at peace, but tonight, at least, we party!