The IRA and U.S. patronage.

NEW YORK, MARCH 1

The British, I learn from a number of chance encounters and from one with an informed British journalist and historian, are under the impression that the life of the IRA is owing to an iron lung supplied by the United States. It is a quite general impression that a) the IRA consumes a great deal of money, which it uses to buy the paraphernalia of terrorism, and b) that money is supplied by Americans who back terrorism as a means of uniting Ireland. It is quite widely thought that the grisly interruption of the 17-month ceasefire reflects at least in part an impatience within America generated by Irish descendants.

What to say?

Well, as good a beginning as any, one supposes, is to record that in the months and months of pronouncements, afterthoughts, and appoggiaturas on the international political scene during this election season, I recall not one reference to the Irish question except general applause for President Clinton's backing of the John Major initiative a few months ago to accelerate a permanent understanding through a peace conference. One assumes there were American dissidents here or there who disdain any meeting between occupiers and occupied. We know from experiences past and present that there is the phenomenon of the diehard, and we even acknowledge that the diehard can be the true patriot. If he persists he may be elevated, in political terminology, to the Resistance. And then if the tide turns in his favor, he becomes the force of Liberation. In 1940, Charles de Gaulle was among the diehards.

But in American politics the backing of the average American with Irish roots was for justice to be done to the Catholics who lived in Northern Ireland. And there was much reason for resentment and indignation, given that the Protestant government had treated the Catholic minority about as South African whites treated the Bantu.

But that struggle was fought and won. The British took over the Stormont, and when political power was returned to Northern Ireland, civil rights were given to the Catholics, all of which satisfied the proximate demands of the republicans. And all political parties in Dublin except Sinn Fein have long agreed that a million Protestants neither can nor should be bombed into a united Ireland.

Pope John Paul II came to Ireland and pleaded for peace. The primary Irish question was thought to be settled, absent only cooperation by the IRA.

The great breakthrough came when John Major's initiative was contingently agreed to by the IRA, and for 17 blissful months there was no terrorist activity. Prime Minister Major then made demands one would think normal under the circumstances, namely that before the parties met to conclude a final, constitutional peace agreement, the IRA surrender their arms. They said no, they would not do so.

My British friend reminds me that the Algerian insurrectionists gave the identical answer to President de Gaulle. Neither side would budge, and impasse was the result: until de Gaulle yielded everything. The Algerians were not about to enter a peace conference which, if it turned against them, would find them disarmed.

But the point is that the arms of the IRA are not a very big budget item. It doesn't cost very much to make a bomb. And therefore the idea that hot-blooded U.S. Irishmen are feeding an assembly line of weapons to the IRA is manifestly absurd. The IRA is not to be likened to the Vietcong, who were capable of mobilizing considerable military offensives along an extensive line, and once captured the second largest city in South Vietnam. The IRA is about things like hand grenades and bombs put together from a mail-order catalogue. Their resonance is owing to the cowardly choice of the targets, who, for all the terrorists care, can be women and children just as well as British soldiers.

There is some sentiment among the British for trying to put an end to it. They are weary over a fierce hostility that is the work not of a nation but of a band of men drawn to the drama of the headline-making bomb going off in central London, or in Brighton, very nearly killing then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Gerry Adams is the Arafat of days gone by, and his freedom to come and go is incommensurate with the responsibility he has for the terrible deaths of random targets. The British should be more widely informed on the insubstantial nature of U.S. shipments to the Irish terrorists. The random talk is of millions and millions of U.S. dollars going to finance them. If that much money is going to the Irish Republican Army, they can get about in private jets, with one hand grenade to toss out of the cockpit when they pass by a schoolyard.