THIS week the ordinary, decent people of Ireland have an opportunity to finally unite, to welcome home the brave young servicemen and women, from all parts of Ireland, who have recently returned from active service in Afghanistan.
These young heroes are Ireland's representatives in a war that civilised, democratic nations of this world dare not lose.
Make no mistake, if the evil forces of global terrorism are not forcefully challenged and defeated at their roots in the dese
rts of the Middle East and Afghanistan, then they will one day have to be fought from a weaker position on our own shores.
This week is an opportunity for the Catholic community to at last welcome home, in spirit, the past generations of brave Catholics who united with their Protestant countrymen to enlist in the British Army during two world wars, to fight for a greater cause.
It is also an opportunity for the Protestant community to at last welcome home, in spirit, the thousands of Ulster-Scot Presbyterian volunteers, who united with their Catholic countrymen, during the 1798 rising, to fight for civil and religious freedom for the working class in Ireland.
All of them shamefully dishonoured, disowned and forgotten by their own communities.
This week let us all be there, to give our brave young heroes the welcome home which our forefathers were shamefully denied.
As expected, the band of bar-room brigadiers, cocaine quartermasters, vodka-fuelled volunteers, and the puppet politicians, who together have subjected this Province to 45 years of pointless, bloody slaughter and destruction, are opposed to the homecoming parades.
Because it brings home clearly to all that, 45 years of madness and bigotry later, Northern Ireland is still firmly British and the Tricolour still flies in Divis Street.
Charlie Freel
Dundonald
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