This is exactly what I have been saying elsewhere: although there is no "right" way to react to and deal with terrible loss, one just feels that bitterness and hatred is another victory for those who caused the loss.
We can't all be Gordon Wilsons, but this lady seems to have grasped the destructive power and ultimate pointlessness of bitterness and lust for revenge.

I agree Jo. However, at this time, I think people need to remember that there have been atrocities on both sides.

What use are apologies? Even if they are received, their sincerity will be questioned.

People in Northern Ireland must draw a line in the sand and leave the past behind if history is to stop repeating itself.

It's reassuring to see people like Beth living and growing after all that's happened. I wish there were more like her, less like Kelly.

Levee:

This place would be better in that case for sure. Elsewhere I have seen mothers write that they would rather be the mother of a victim that the mother of the person who did the murder. I dont think the Kelly family can be exactly proud.

Granting an amnesty for murderers will tear open wounds and gouge deeper into many still gaping.

"I think people need to remember that there have been atrocities on both sides."

That depends on how you define the sides. For me Adams, Maginnis, Irvive, Mc Micheal, etc are all on the same side. By definition, those that commmit, inlcuding plan, attrocities are all on the one side.

Bertie:
The amnesty, as you see it, is now 5 years old and many have accepted it as the price that has had to be paid. Not everything is palatable about this process but its better than what went before.

Many, not necessarily your good self, still hark after outright war against terrorism and want them all to die violent deaths. Thats unrealistic, vengeful and would of necessity mean many many more deaths than those actively involved. Surely we have learned that from our troubled times?

Jo you do not get peace by giving away its fundamental building blocks.

"many have accepted it as the price that has had to be paid. "

that is not to their credit.

I do and will hark after an outright war against terrorism and no I don't want them to die violent deaths, but I would prefer that to an amnesty. In the same way that I am opposed to the death penalty but would prefer an unrepentant murder to be executed than free.

Justice is not vengance. I have never advocated the latter.

We seem to have forgotten the leasons that appeasing terrorism does not work.

Bertie:

It does rather depend on how you guage if a process is working.

Not having a constant series of foul murders day in day out, does appear to suggest that encouraging violent people to throw their energies into politics rather than killing, is in some sense at least "better" if, as you would say, highly distasteful.

Actually, and this is what I meant to type - I find it distasteful too.

No Jo, distasteful doesn't bother me, wrong does. Appeasing terrorism fuels it. governments should be defending the rights of victims to justice not making a present of them to the murderers.

We are encouragiung people to throw their energies into politics for as long as they can get what they want and when they have sucked that dry, they can return to terrorism, in the full knowledge that if they murder enough they will be given more and then they can start again offering to give up again and so get more concessions, in the proven knowledge that many people including the government will swallow it.

Bertie, well we should be confident that the current generation will not make the return to terrorism, and equally, it behoves us all to ensure that there is nothing in our society which makes any future generation (and one which is possibly less bound by relgion-based morality than at present) consider the option of violence under any circumstances.

"we should be confident that the current generation will not make the return to terrorism"

I am not.

"it behoves us all to ensure that there is nothing in our society which makes any future generation (and one which is possibly less bound by relgion-based morality than at present) consider the option of violence under any circumstances"

This is precisely why we should not appease terrorism. This makes it much more likely that people in the future will take this option. There are three main factors in becoming a terrorist.
1) soemthing you want to acheive - nothing inherently wrong in this although it depends on the detail of the thing to be acheived.

2) absence of the moral block that would rule out terrorism as an option

3) the beleive that it will work.

We have very much shored up 3.

Either the IRA are a threat or they are not.

If they are not then why have an amnesty? Surely it cannot be the "price of peace" if the IRA is not a threat?

Bertie:
I enjoyed your contribution on miscarriages of justice etc, in "another place" as they say. :)

Would that I could come up with a formula to ensure that no-one would ever use terrorism again, but given that so much of history is in fact a history of violence (the USA and Parliamentary demoracy in the UK both having been created by a war of independence and a Civil War respectively), its hard to argue that smaller causes shouldn't go down this path when such issues have mobilised people on a massive scale to kill over the centuries. I heard a RSF spokesperson yesterday talking of the "inevitable" resistance to Britain in Ireland but he wasnt pressed on why it was inevitable that this shouild always take a violent form SF are as supportive of unification as they always weree - the hope being that they will no longer support or be involved in violence to bring that end about.