WHEN WILL IT ALL END?

                         AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH

          In a recent speech, Richard Haass, Director of Policy Planning for
the U.S. State Department and the official with responsibility for Northern
Ireland, referred to the "brutish behavior and bitter sectarianism displayed
by those adults in North Belfast." He was describing the obscene behavior of
loyalist protestors at the Catholic Holy Cross primary school in the Ardoyne
area of North Belfast this past fall. Among other things, these adult(?)
protestors shouted vulgarities, tossed stones, balloons filled with urine and
excrement, and even on one occasion, a blast bomb at female students who
ranged from four to eleven years of age.

       Contrary to popular belief, this problem did not just explode on the
scene in 2001. It has existed in this area for decades. "I know what it is
like to be jeered at, walking down the street. I know what it is like to be
scared stiff…On that same street, on that same road, they came and they put
us out of our home. The home that I was put out of in Belfast was a stone's
throw from that little school. That school was my mother's old school. I was
born and reared in Ardoyne. …Many's the time I carried a hurl to school to
protect myself. I know what it is to live in a home there and to have riots
break out on your doorstep every single day." These words could have been
uttered by any Catholic who lived in the area but they happened to have been
said by Mary McAleese, a name you might recognize since she bears  the same
title as you, President, President of the Republic of Ireland. How someone
from Belfast becomes President of Ireland is a story for another day.

      While condemning the outrageous behavior of the protestors, your Mr.
Haass tried to excuse it by stating reasons for these inexcusable actions. He
referred to this rage being "… rooted in economic distress, uneasiness over
demographic changes, lack of proper housing and most importantly- a fear that
the new society being built in Northern Ireland offers little place for those
doing the protesting: for Protestants, for loyalists, for unionists."

     One of your favorite words arising out of the horrendous events of 9/11
is evil. Well these protestors are evil and it is time we stopped making
excuses for them. We are not and should not be making excuses for al-Qaeda or
the Taliban. We would not make excuses for Hitler or Stalin. Why do we make
excuses for a group of dinosaurs who refuse to admit that their totalitarian
rule is over? They have abused the Catholic population from day one of the
setting up of the bastardized statelet known as Northern Ireland eighty years
ago. Contrary to the implication of Mr. Haass, nationalist and republican
leaders have continually called for the inclusion of all the people on an
equal basis. But equality is never acceptable to bigots because they believe
that they are more equal than others just by reason of their birth. People
who believe in equality do not throw balloons filled with urine at
four-year-old girls. Perhaps what Mr. Haass wanted to say was that the
obscene actions of these protestors are the last dying gasp of bigots who
realize in their guts that their time is coming to an end but refuse to admit
it in their minds.

     I entitled this piece " When will it all end?" It will end when we tell
 the bigots that it is over, that their brutal repression of the rights of
Catholics has to cease. By we, I mean the United States of America. It is
time to abandon the " honest broker" and the " two warring tribes" fictions.
We all know that there is no honest brokering involved because there is
nothing to honest broker. There are no two warring tribes. Clear and simple
what you have is one group that has improperly exercised domination over the
other. Northern Ireland has been an abomination since its inception and now
is the time to end it.                          


     Who do we tell? Well we can start with the protestors at Holy Cross
School, continue with loyalist paramilitaries and unionist leaders
such as David Trimble and finish with Great Britain. Yes, Great Britain, for
that is where the power still remains and the likes of the protestors at Holy
Cross School will never go away until they finally realize that Great Britain
intends to do the right thing and remove itself from a country it never had a
right to be in, in the first place. There has been a great upsurge in
patriotism in this country since 9/11 and that is good. However, vis-à-vis
Northern Ireland, it is time for this country to stand on the principles that
it was founded on, the ones we have been espousing since 9/11, even if that
means telling our closet ally that they are wrong.


                                   Gerald P. Lally, Esq.
                                   Political Action Chair
                                   Irish American Unity Conference
                                   January 13, 2002