THE republican movement may not have succeeded in uniting Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, but it has managed, for the time being at least, to unite John Bruton and David Ervine.
It may not have succeeded in pleasing the White House, but it has turned Bill Clinton's adviser, Anthony Lake, into an admirer of the loyalist paramilitary leadership.
The IRA certainly succeeded in penetrating military headquarters in Northern Ireland - only to be accused by Bertie Ahern of a deeply unpatriotic act, defeatism, cowardice and political illusions.
The attack may have the usual calls from predictable quarters for Sinn Fein's speedy admission to the multi party talks at Stormont.
But the bombs at Thiepval barracks - the second timed to catch those who went to help the victims of the first - also forced many constitutional leaders to conclude that it might now be necessary to press ahead without the republicans.
The spokesmen and supporters of Sinn Fein and/or the IRA complain regularly that their critics are not really qualified to criticise them: some are not Irish, others not Irish enough, for the job.
But their most dramatic failures are not those measured by the standards of the constitutional parties: they fail as Mr Ahern suggested by their own lights and in the eyes of leaders, lay and clerical, who could be described as their near neighbours.
DAVID Ervine's was the most stinging criticism of the week. Here were the republicans, who made much of their ambition to unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, setting off explosions within ear shot of the Maze while Mr Ervine was trying to persuade prisoners to continue supporting the loyalist ceasefire.
Wolfe Tone must be spinning in his grave, said Mr Ervine. (A loyalist, at whose culture the republicans had scoffed, reminding them that one of their own most cherished claims was only skindeep.)
And in the Dail, Mr Bruton said that Mr Ervine was right. The bombers were not only betraying Tone's ideals, as the loyalist spokesman had also said, they were employing the tactics of fascism.
"The Irish State," said the Taoiseach, "cannot be hostage to tactical manoeuvres by a violent movement which is only willing to give up the option of violence if it gets the terms it has dictated to everybody else and is willing to continue to use violence as one of its tactics from time to time to get those terms.
"Those were the classic tactics of national socialists and fascists during the 1920s and the 1930s. The strategy of the ballot box in one hand and the gun in the other was, after all, first originated by the Nazis."
The comparison took some politicians and commentators by surprise. A Fianna Fail deputy, Ivor Callely, said Mr Bruton would live to regret it. Pat Doherty of Sinn Fein called for a more statesmanlike approach".
But, just as Mr Ahern's criticism echoed that of a Fine Gael Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, who shocked many in the 1970s with his view that violence was killing the desire for unity, Mr Bruton echoed a politician who has studied the republican movement at closer range.
In his address to the SDLP's annual conference in 1988, John Hume reported on a series of meetings he had had with Sinn Fein leaders. He found among them "the mirror images of traditional unionism".
"They, too, believe in themselves alone as the only answer to the problems of a deeply divided society, without the slightest reference, apart from verbal genuflections and lip service, to the existence of anyone else.
"Self determination of the Irish people is their objective, they say. The Irish people are defined by them, if we judge by their actions and their contempt for the views of other Irish people, as themselves alone.
"They are more Irish than the rest of us, they believe. They are the pure master race of Irish. They are the keepers of the holy grail of the nation.
"That deep seated attitude, married to their method, has all the hallmarks of undiluted fascism. They also have the other hallmark of the fascist, the scapegoat. The Brits are to blame for everything even their own atrocities.
"They know better than the rest of us. They know so much better that they take unto themselves the right, without consultation with anyone, to dispense death and destruction. By destroying Ireland's people they destroy Ireland."
Later in the speech Mr Hume reported: "In the last 20 years, republicans have killed more than twice as many Catholics as the security forces and in the last to years have killed more than the loyalists. Some defenders." And he asked: "Was it O'Casey who said `The gunmen are not dying for the people, the people are dying for the gunmen'?"
Paul Arthur remembered this week how, in a related argument, Cardinal Cabal Daly undermined the Provisionals claim to be engaged in a just war by pointing out that theirs was a disproportionate response to the grievances they cited.
It was. And it still is. But 24 years ago, when Cahal Daly was Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise and the Northern conflict had continued for three years, he wrote of JeanPaul Sartre's devastating analysis of the moral fanatic:
"[He] has all his decisions settled in advance by unarguable abstractions and all his moral judgments determined in advance by inexorable and timeless absolutes.
"It is morality without dialogue or discussion, without self questioning or openness to evidence or to experience. But it is, Sartre concludes, a morality of the dead, not of the living."
No one can argue that John Hume or Cabal Daly stand apart from what's happening in Northern Ireland or that since 1988, they haven't worked desperately to draw Sinn Fein into constitutional politics.
As Dick Spring argues with endless patience, changes have taken place and much more is possible. There is, for the first time since the 1970s, a forum at which nationalists and unionists can discuss their future together.
If hypothetical issues are not allowed to block discussions and everyone recognises that there are no threats to any interest, only the parties themselves can set a limit to their progress.
SINCE 1988, however, the loyalist paramilitaries have shown them to be as ruthless and indiscriminate as republicans of any tendency - which makes it all the more dangerous to tempt them with a gratuitous insult now.
The Provisionals may have been trying to make a macho point this week: if British intelligence can get to the core of Provo operations in London, why shouldn't the IRA show that it has the measure of military headquarters in Lisburn?
Indifference to the crucial loyalist meeting at the Maze is no more than the usual dismissal of the Protestants: the Provos have more grandiose ideas and bigger targets in their sights, the British army and the British government.
That, at least, is how the rhetoric sounds from behind the masks worn by all Sinn Fein leaders for their post atrocity performances.
Gerry Adams is first on, with an air of injured innocence and the claim that no one really knows who did it. (He thought British intelligence bombed the Killyhevlin Hotel.) Then Mitchel McLaughlin and Pat Doherty are wheeled out.
Solemnly, Mitchel and Pat recite the mantra of British responsibility, thumbing their grievances like characters from the BBC's Hole in the Wall Gang (a reminder on Friday nights of Gerry Stembridge's Scrap Saturday).
But, while David Ervine and his friends plead with the loyalists to keep tee peace, the Provos sound as though they are trying to justify war.
Which makes it difficult to disagree with John Major's message to Gerry Adams from the platform at Bournemouth: "Don't tell me this has nothing to do with you. I don't believe you, Mr Adams."