Evil truth of an Irish 'hero'

Adams & Terrorist's


ANDREW BOLT
Evil truth of an Irish 'hero'
18mar05

SO where now are Gerry Adams' famous friends, who so cheered this man when he came rattling his tin in 1999?

Audit time. Let's check again who once appeased yet another hero-thug - whose day is now done.
That tour of Adams, president of Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein party, nearly didn't happen. The Howard Government hummed and hawed and only at the point of a gun - figuratively speaking, this time - gave in to the ire of the wise and let in this barbarian.
Yes, Adams said he now had nothing to do with the IRA and had renounced violence. But who really believed him? Who indeed.
The reason I ask is that Adams has now been exposed. His downfall accelerated from December, when police figured a $60 million bank robbery was the work of the IRA, now a huge and slick criminal gang.
Outraged, the Irish Government named Adams and fellow Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness as secret members of the IRA's army council (which they again denied). Big surprise.
Then, on January 30, IRA thugs attacked a man in a Belfast pub, and when his mate Robert McCartney intervened, smashed, slashed and stomped him, too.
McCartney, a well-liked father of two children, had his jugular cut and his skull so crushed that an eye popped out. His attackers left him and his friend to die in the street and banned drinkers in the pub from even calling an ambulance.
They then barred the doors, destroyed security tapes, cleaned up evidence, warned witnesses to say nothing and left. Most of the 70 drinkers, who included a Sinn Fein candidate, told police they'd been in the toilets. What fight?
That is where it would have ended, again - but McCartney had five sisters and a fiancee who were so sick with grief they no longer feared the IRA. Instead, they shamed it, speaking out, demanding justice.
Panicked, the IRA told the sisters it would shoot their brother's killers to make up - revealing itself as a feral animal, beyond any hope now of taming.
Now President George W. Bush has shut his door to Adams, and politicians everywhere want his IRA to disband. But who were the Australians who just six years ago hailed him?
There was then ACTU president Jennie George - now a Labor backbencher - who likened Adams to Nelson Mandela. There was the Labor Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Jim Soorley, who shouted him a civic reception for 600 guests.
Also greeting him were Democrats leader Meg Lees, Labor boss Kim Beazley, and our soft-headed premier Jeff Kennett. The University of New South Wales had him give a speech, broadcast on the ABC.
PRIME Minister John Howard was among the few who snubbed Adams, and the usual suspects were furious. Howard was "a man of limited vision and generosity", raged the Financial Review's Geoffrey Barker, now a critic of the liberation of Iraq. A "petty individual", agreed Soorley, ditto.
"Howard's poor choice on Adams," raged The Age, which ran one piece by footballer Jim Stynes praising Adams for being "like Nelson Mandela", and another by a reporter wowed by his "Hollywood aura".
On it went - praise from smart people who again wouldn't see that appeasement is weakness to men of violence. How hard really is this playground lesson?

bolta@heraldsun.com.au

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