Marian Finucane and ‘ordinary decent wars’

Marian Finucane was not happy with the comment by Gerry Adams that people are ‘disappeared’ in every war.

Not all wars have disappeared. I remember the outcry across the world over Pinochet and Chile and the disappeared. Somehow or another that’s not kind of standard in your ordinary decent war.

This is the kind of ignorance that’s going to escalate as we approach the climax of the 1916/100 commemorations.

It seems that Ms. Finucane happily operates under the delusion that there is such a thing as an ‘ordinary decent war’ and that the participants in these ‘decent’ wars would be outraged at the idea that anybody would be ‘disappeared’.

Stuffed into ovens in millions, yes. Wiped out in mass bombings of cities, yes. Cut down in swathes by machine gun fire and artillery, yes. Systematically cut to pieces for practicing the wrong religion, yes.

But abducted and ‘disappeared’, no, nobody could be that evil – except Sinn Fein/IRA.

Ms Finucane, apparently, can think of only two conflicts, Chile and Northern Ireland, where people were disappeared.

She’s seems to be blissfully unaware the people are disappeared in every war. I would be genuinely astonished to learn of a war in which people were not abducted, murdered and ‘disappeared’.

RTE management really should insist that if a presenter is going to comment on current affairs/history they should possess at least a smidgeon of knowledge on the subject.

Or could it be that Ms. Finucane has so bought into the establishment’s anti Sinn Fein propaganda campaign that she now believes, without question, that acts of war committed by the IRA are, somehow, more gruesome, more reprehensible than any other act of war ever committed throughout history?

Yes, I think that’s nearer the truth.

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Marian Finucane