The murder rate in those years in Northern Ireland was 6 per 100,000 people. In Miami, the mean homicide rate between 1985 and 1994 was 34 per 100,000; in New York it was 25; in Chicago 27. In Washington DC, where Bill Clinton lived, it was 60 – ten times a bad as in Northern Ireland.3 A cynic might have wondered why Clinton was pouring his energies into ending the violence in a small, sad corner of Europe, when it was flourishing at much greater heights far closer to home.
