The US deplores Hezbollah’s existence but helps the IRA, says david lindsay |
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No state should tolerate an alternative state in its midst with its own private army. Hezbollah may have won 10 per cent of the vote in the Lebanese election, netting two Cabinet seats, but there can be only one army in Lebanon. There can be only one government there.
The same must be true of any other country, including the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. Yet, in practice, it is not. Successive American administrations have forced the Republic and Britain to accept a private army which regards both governments as illegitimate and claims that its own self-perpetuating Army Council is the sovereign body throughout Ireland.
This claim has been used as the basis for the creation of a vast criminal empire. Purporting to act on the sovereign body's authority, the IRA robs banks, deals in drugs
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| Sinn Fein was a fringe party until Bill Clinton granted Gerry Adams a visa |
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on an enormous scale and controls the prostitution racket in the North and much of the Republic. It carries out "punishment" attacks and killings, even against teenagers.
Sinn Fein was a fringe party until Bill Clinton granted Gerry Adams a visa in 1994. Suddenly, it could present itself as mainstream and respectable.
Yet even with this official American support, Sinn Fein has scored only enough votes to secure two Cabinet seats in Northern Ireland's devolved government. In the south, with an elaborate form of proportional representation, it scrapes into a handful of seats from time to time, and that is it.
One does not have to be part of the anti-American bloc - or accept current Anglo-American foreign policy - to feel that the superpower is profoundly hypocritical. The US has consistently refused to ratify an extradition treaty with the UK - a treaty that would permit the extradition from America of people a great deal worse than even Hezbollah. 
FIRST
POSTED AUGUST 18, 2006
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Lebanon factfile
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