To silence the lawyers and judges in Northern Ireland is to deter, at best, or nullify, at worst, the rule of law. And many know this.

The story, of Northern Ireland's recent darkness, however, goes much deeper than the killing of lawyers and judges. There are hundreds, thousands of persons in Belfast, Derry, Enniskillen, Loughall, Omagh, and every narrow lane of Northern Ireland who have perpetrated death or have had it visited upon their families or friends.

There's the Belfast-based Relatives for Justice, a collection of bereaved Catholic families who are desperate for answers to the questions swirling about the deaths of their husbands, brothers, sisters, mothers, and daughters in circumstances indicating a shoot-kill policy by the security forces, or perhaps a form of murky collusion between those same forces and loyalist paramilitaries.

There's the Protestant Families Acting for Innocent Relatives, a group of citizens who became so incensed over the naming of a small street in Oakland, California, USA, for republican Gerry Adams, that several of their members traveled to Oakland to protest.

There are police widows who find it incomprehensible to countenance the recent significant police reforms proposed by the Patten Commission, let alone the prospect of republicans such as Martin McGuinness in the new Northern Ireland assembly.

And there are the non-political, the unprepared citizens such as those in Omagh, which last year lost 29 of its townspeople in a post-cease-fire bomb blast in the downtown shopping area, a horrific act without foreshadowing, without context, occurring at a time when things like this just weren't supposed to happen anymore.

In a good majority of these deaths, and the grief that has spawned from them, it remains difficult, if not impossible to separate them from a political context.

Many of those killed, whose deaths are now considered as "unfortunate" or "regrettable", were at the time considered military "targets" because of their position, their actions, their political views, or merely their religion.

In talking with people across the spectrum of Northern Ireland society, one learns that almost everyone, in some way large or small, laments the killing of the last thirty years. But, concomitantly, you will usually hear that it's "their" people who have suffered the most. If you try to talk about deaths other than "their own", deaths on the other side, one invariably hears, "yes, that's terrible, but you have to remember that _______ have been killed, too." The blank is filled in by them and theirs, whether they be fellow police or legal professionals, IRA volunteers, loyalist defenders, or the wee boy or girl just down the road.

All suffering is subject to this balancing equation, in which suffering needs to be parsed out in equal amounts to keep the conversation going, to keep the curious apprised that "their" side was traumatized first, perhaps more.

To admit without qualification that the "other side" has suffered, that they have grievances, that their scorn and hurt is not a birthmark but rather the badge of years of conflict, is to legitimize the other side, to open a door into a world without absolutes, to open a door that is easier to keep closed than to confront the void of low-intensity warfare without end. To make such an admission is suspect, and is a non-starter.

What was missing after the death of many over the past several years was the courage of Northern Ireland's political and community leaders -- devoid of any local governmental constraints, instead left to speak to only their own class-based or "Irish-question"-based parochial constituencies -- to reach out to the other side, to all sides, to salve the wounds that diminished all.

America at present, despite its faults and paramilitaries-without-portfolio masquerading as militia members, is nowhere nearly as divided as Northern Ireland was and is.

However, in the 1960s, our country was heading in that direction. Viet Nam had polarized generations and classes into "yes" and "no" camps. Ugly scenes of Southern racism and nationwide race-riots scarred the national psyche. Violence was visible, either firsthand or via television, to the average citizen, and it was persistent: President Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, all killed in a five-year span. When King died, for many a great deal of optimism about the course of non-violence and the prospects for racial harmony died with him. In the darkness of the American soul, anger fomented. Bigotry apparently had won, and the hopes of the unhappy, the poor, the oppressed, the discriminated, the idealistic, and the ordinary had been capped. More violence and acrimony appeared inevitable.

On the day King was killed, Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning in Indiana. That evening he was scheduled to speak in an Indianapolis ghetto. Some of his campaign staff and the Indianapolis chief of police warned him not to enter the ghetto, to relocate or to cancel the engagement. Kennedy, visibly shaken by the news, decided to proceed with the rally. He entered the ghetto, climbed onto a flatbed truck in a parking lot, and informed the mostly black audience that King had been killed. There was a gasp from the crowd as many heard the news for the first time. He continued:

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black --- you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization -- black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort ---- to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is... a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black....

We've had difficult times in the past. We will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago; to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and our people.

Northern Ireland has never truly had that speech, one that reaches out to the other side while reaching out to all sides. Until recent times, given the political divisions mired in a state of armed conflict, offering it hasn't even been a possibility. But the citizens of Northern Ireland need that speech, that way of thinking, as do we all. And someday, if political progress continues and paramilitary violence minimizes and becomes universally scorned, it will happen. Perhaps from Gerry Adams? Perhaps from David Trimble? More likely from John Hume, or David Ervine, or Monica McWilliams. Or, even more likely, perhaps from the next generation's political representatives, those not immune from but less infused with distrust and the legacy of violence.

The best hope for Northern Ireland as the century turns is that the "vast majority" of people who have either disavowed violence or been simply worn down by it all. And that may be the best that the current generation can offer: to make the seismic step to turn away from violence, for each side to substitute tolerance for violence as the means of achieving their version of the Promised Land.

The only positive analysis of the death of Rosemary Nelson is that her death did not predicate violent retaliation from any quarter. No one appropriated her name to justify the perpetuation of cruelty. Perhaps it is into this safer, lighter world that Rosemary Nelson's children will grow and succeed.

What awaits Northern Ireland, in the anticipated reduction of violence, is the need for healing, in a culture that does not embrace therapy. Thirty years of death and bereavement will take decades worth of reasonable tranquility to segue to reconciliation. At the end of this millennium, the prospects look hopeful.

In the next millennium, Northern Ireland may persists as part of the United Kingdom, gradually merge into a united Ireland, or find its disputed border rendered meaningless in a more globular age. What is more important, though, is that the border of resorting to political violence may have been crossed, left behind to history.

Dan VanDeMortel, a legal assistant in San Francisco, recently accompanied the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights on an investigative mission into the deaths of Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, as well as to monitor the current political climate for defense solicitors. He is also the editor of Northern Ireland Alert's Congressional Scorecard.

Roughly 60% of Northern Ireland's citizens are predominantly Protestants and Unionist, meaning that they favor maintaining Northern Ireland's ties with Great Britain. Loyalists are those who advocate[d] violence in this regard. The other 40% of the population is predominantly Catholic and Nationalist, favoring unification with the Republic of Ireland. Republicans are those who advocate[d] violence toward this end.