The End is Near!

For The Troubles in Northern Ireland, anyway.

The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) yesterday pledged to renounce violence and disarm. Long a key player in the terrorist war between Catholic and Protestant, the UVF will undertake a "non-military" role in the forming joint government.

I have a poster of "Known Terrorist Organizations and their Emblems" on my wall, and will now cross another off the list. This sort of progress is good collateral of the "War on Terror", as less visible, but quite deadly organizations who used terror and violence to achieve socio-political ends start to feel the heat from law enforcement, and a major shift in public attitudes toward such methods. Before 9-11, the Irish bars in Yonkers and the north Bronx were a steady source of funds for the IRA and linked organizations. But still-hurting wounds caused by hundreds of dead cops and firefighters reminded sympathetic drinkers, as they shed tears for Erin while Kevin Barry played on the juke, that their dollars created 9-11s for other people somewhere else.

Moral support lost its legs, and faces turned to the leadership demanding peace.

With the Protestant side laying down their weapons too, the possibility of peace becomes greater than it has been at any time since Cromwell arrived.

And to think, it only took 400 years. There's a lesson in that for others whose grudges are much older.