Dublin: The sheer shock of Queen Elizabeth speaking Gaelic during her remarks at a state dinner in her honor was bad enough.

Then there was the shot of her standing to attention for the Irish national anthem, and then of her laying a wreath on the remembrance plot for IRA heroes.

This is all too much to bear.

Do I wake or dream?

Has someone invented a Bizzaro world, you know that planet that Superman lived on before he came down to earth where everything was the direct opposite of what it was supposed to be?

What has happened here this week in Ireland has been little short of extraordinary.

Basically, the British have made the decision to bury the hatchet.


That was not a decision taken lightly, the British never do that.

But when they move they do it in style

After 800 years or so of intermittent warfare of the worst kind, the emissary in the shape of the queen has come to announce terms.

Those terms are splashed across every front page of the Irish media today.

'What were once hopes for the future have now come to pass' says The Irish Times headline, a direct quote from the queen.

The future has arrived in the new era for the Irish and British peoples.

There will be no more war.

Sure there will be crazies who want to keep shooting like those Japanese soldiers after World War 2 who never got the meessage until years later that hostilities had ceased.

They sail in puddles of the past as Patrick Kavanagh has written.

Another phrase from the queen jumps out 'being able to bow to the past, but not being bound by it'

That is what Ireland and Britain must do now.

The unionists in Northern Ireland must see the message from both the Irish leaders and the Queen on behalf of the British this week that they want no more war.

The Dissident IRA must see it too.

James Joyce once wrote that history is a nightmare from which the Irish are trying to awaken.

I think we all just woke up.

This queen's visit is so successful, so full of substance that it threatens to completely overshadow Obama's visit here on Monday.

Who would have thunk that?

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