Time & Perspective Quote by Mitchell Reiss

"It's time for the IRA to go out of business" is the kind of line diplomats favor when they want to sound definitive without sounding bloodthirsty. Mitchell Reiss frames political violence as an industry: an organization with revenue streams (smuggling, protection rackets, legitimacy-by-fear), a payroll (cadres, prisoners, loyal communities), and a brand (resistance, martyrdom, defiance). Telling it to "go out of business" isn’t just a demand to disarm; it’s a rhetorical demotion. The IRA is stripped of romance and recast as a stubborn enterprise that has outlived its market.

The intent is pressure with plausible deniability. Reiss isn’t issuing an ultimatum from a podium with troops behind him; he’s tightening the moral perimeter around the peace process. In the post-Good Friday Agreement world, the argument is that politics has been reopened and therefore violence is no longer insurgency but sabotage. The phrase “time for” carries the paternal cadence of a deadline that pretends to be history’s natural schedule: the future has moved on; only the IRA hasn’t.

Subtext: legitimacy is now the scarce commodity. If the IRA keeps weapons, it keeps a claim on exceptional status. Reiss’ wording implies that decommissioning isn’t a concession to Britain but a necessary closure for Northern Irish politics to become normal - boring, procedural, contestable. “Out of business” also leaves room for reinvention: the movement can survive as a party, not an army. It’s a hard message delivered in soft packaging, designed to make quitting look less like surrender and more like overdue restructuring.