FROM the outside, good can appear a flimsy thing, and evil
uncomfortably strong. But on the inside, evil is eating itself.
Tommy Crossan, aged 43, was recently shot dead. A former
Continuity IRA (CIRA) leader, he was sitting in a hut at a fuel
business off the Springfield Road in west Belfast - an area of
tightly packed housing and Republican sympathies. The assassin
fired through the window of the hut, which was used as an office in
the Peter Pan industrial complex. Mr Crossan received fatal wounds
in the upper body, and was declared dead at the hospital, after
receiving the last rites at the scene of the crime from a
priest.
"The murder of Mr Crossan was a brutal and ruthless attack which
has no place in society," Detective Superintendent Jonathan Roberts
said. "No matter what his lifestyle was, absolutely nothing
justifies this barbaric action against him."
The CIRA murdered PC Stephen Carroll in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, in
March 2009, but has since been troubled by splits, and there are
echoes here of the assassination of Declan Smith. He was shot dead
while dropping off his child at a crèche in Dublin in 2012.
Connected to the Real IRA, he was thought to be caught in a feud
over the proceeds from extortion rackets run by the
organisation.
Seeing crime eat itself reminds me of the Brooklyn mafia gang
who, in the 1970s, killed more Americans than the Iraqi army.
Created by Roy DeMeo, the gang members started out killing for
profit and revenge, and then sometimes for pleasure.
"It is like having the power of God," DeMeo told one of his
associates. "Deciding who lives, who dies." But it was a version of
God which became less and less satisfying for DeMeo - and
ultimately fatal.
His best killer was his "adopted son", Chris, who led the
assassination squad. They would shoot or stab victims, dismember
them, and then deposit their bagged remains on a rubbish tip. Chris
was the apple of DeMeo's eye; but when he upset another gang
leader, DeMeo, in order to avert a war, had the assassination squad
turn on their former friend - which they did, without a qualm.
A year later, it was the same squad, created by DeMeo, who
"whacked" DeMeo himself - the killer killed - when his boss felt he
that he had outlived his usefulness.
Evil is a cannibal that eats itself in the end. The word,
appropriately, is "live" spelt backwards, meaning "anything that is
against life - even its own". This is why it may have a present,
but no future. "Remember that all through history, the way of truth
and love has always won," Mahatma Gandhi said. "There have been
tyrants and murderers, and, for a time, they seem invincible, but
in the end, they always fall - think of it, always."
Whether truth and love win is debatable; but evil certainly
dies.
