The Wind That Shakes the Barley

I guess with an Irish-wife - OK almost Irish - red-head, great-grandfather (I think) from County Cork - that should count for something - somehow I heard about this movie; The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

OK caution - if you are offended by the "f-word" whether in English or heavily accented English spoken by Irishmen or in subtitles - then maybe you don't want to watch this. I didn't even try to keep count but next to "lads" and "grand" as in "I am grand," this has to be the most widely used word in the Irish vocabulary in the early 20th century. The Brits liked it too.

The story is way too complicated to recount. Suffice it to say it helps understand a little about the history of Ireland and her struggle with Britain. Trust me - if you don't already hate all things British, you will after watching this movie.

The history is way-too-complex to understand but it made me want to re-read Trinity by Leon Uris and to find another set of books by a woman named Morgan Llywelyn. Their titles are the numbers of years - 1916, 1921, 1949 and 1972 - which I guess are particularly significant in Irish history. I'll find out.

I know people will try to draw parallels and used the terrorism used by the IRA and others to in some weird way justify (or elicit sympathy for) the actions of radical Islamic terrorists but I would quickly point out that while I don't really care for the war in Iraq, our goal is not to run that country, occupy it for any longer than we have to and with few egregious exceptions, we don't rape and pillage the countryside in the name of democracy.

As I understand it, Ireland wanted to be free from British rule (does this story sound familiar?) and some - and you could call them radicals - used tactics that we could call terrorism. I'm not condoning what they did when lives were lost and property was destroyed but I can at least understand the desperate situation they were in. And while I'm sure some of the British soldiers were stereotyped, if they were half as bad as they were made out to be, then I can also understand the reaction of the Irish to these "occupiers" who made life miserable for the locals.

I plan to read up again on this situation and while I know I can never completely understand the two sides here, I'd like to have a better handle on this one. Maybe after this I'll tackle the whole mess in then-Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Croatia and what are now the - countries I can't name or pronounce.