This appeared a year ago last March in The Hill pundits Blog:

I serve on the board of a charity organization called Cooperation Ireland, dedicated to promoting peace in Northern Ireland between the nationalist and loyalist communities. This organization helps fund projects focused on bringing together two communities that have rarely intermingled in the last 30 years, communities that don’t really know, like or trust each other. Building peace is hard work, and the really hard work is not done by the politicians, it is done by the people.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) spoke to our annual dinner in New York last night, and he did a great job. I am supporting Rudy Giuliani for president (he was honored by the group last year), but that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect McCain and his contributions to our nation.

McCain made the link between the good news in Ireland and the increasingly bad news in Iraq. Building civil societies out of communities that are sharply divided is hard work. Anybody looking for easy answers to the situation in Iraq is kidding himself. Just look how hard it was to implement the Good Friday Accords. Ten years later, and only now are the people of Northern Ireland getting the devolved government that had been promised.  Read more...