AP Photo

I first developed a taste for Irish whiskey back in 1978. I was a young foreign correspondent sent to Northern Ireland to cover the Troubles, the civil conflict that broke out in the 1960s and ended, for the most part, in 1998. Covering wars was different back then. Reporters were neutrals. Catholics and Protestants, Republicans and Loyalists—they all would sit down with me in Belfast pubs. Even the hard men, even the terrorists—they all wanted to tell me their stories (and no one tells stories like the Irish), persuade me of the justice of their cause, let me buy them a drink, or two, or three. No one seemed to have any desire to cut my head off. How times change.