In Northern Ireland today the Democratic Unionist Ian Paisley was sworn in as the first minister, with Sinn Fein (read: IRA) will take up his post as Paisley's deputy. World leaders are finally daring to hope that bloodshed in Northern Ireland will end.
I mention this for two reasons. The first is that this was an intense, deadly and bloody fight between two bodies of the same religion: the Protestants and the Catholics. Yes, they are officially divided into "Republicans" and "Loyalists," but for all intents and purposes, this was a religious power struggle, and everyone knows it. And it took decades of actual fighting to resolve the issue at last.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
The second reason I mention this is that these two sides, who are not exactly best buds, were able to overcome their differences for the sake of their suffering people. The people of America are not exactly suffering as a whole at this point, but the soldiers in Iraq certainly aren't having the time of their lives. We can only hope that the Democrats and Republicans can have the same levels of maturity as the Unionists and Sinn Fein.
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