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Over the weekend, two soldiers and a policeman were shot dead in Northern Ireland in, it seems, a desperate attempt to derail the peace process and return the people who have to live in that bedevilled province to the terror of past decades. However, what's bugging me is the use of the word "killings" to describe what's happened.
The word sounds almost designed to allow for the idea that maybe it wasn't murder. Let's be clear about this. Those people were murdered,deliberately, and in cold blood. And what did it achieve? A show of redoubled unity.
When Martin McGuinness (ex-leader of the IRA itself, now Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland) stands shoulder to shoulder on camera with the Chief Constable and they both express disgust at what's happened, the time for terror has clearly long past.
This is a democracy, but it's a spiky one. If you try to kick against it, it hurts you back; you must engage with it. If McGuiness can grasp that idea, so can anyone.
