Google| Subject | Re: MSR and Ojay, you're on notice...[was Re: The British Secret Service...[was Re: Republicanism st |
| From | Russ |
| Date | 04/30/2002 17:36 (04/30/2002 17:36) |
| Message-ID | <20020430113602.00985.00010187@mb-cu.aol.com> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | alt.fan.tolkien |
| Follows | ?jevind L?ng |
John Savard said:
?jevind L?ngWell, that's a problem right off the bat.
I see the Irish situation rather simply.
The IRA used violence directly against innocent civilians in an effort to effect a political change.Over the entire Troubles, 50% of those killed by British security were civilians; 80% of those killed by loyalists were civilians; 30% of those killed by the IRA were civilians.
Now who was targeting civilians?
They did it in a time when the Irish in Northern Ireland were not being subjected to anything comparable to the terrible historical injustices of Ireland's past.Incorrect. In 1969, Protestant mobs, back and supported by the Protestant police force were attacking and burning out Catholic neighborhoods. In this period, about 40,000 Catholic were burned or terrorized out of their homes. The British Army initially came in to *protect* Catholics from these attacks.
In 1969, the British Army killed 2 civilians and the RUC killed 7 civilians. The killing in 1969 was a 67 year old civilian killed by the RUC. He was a Catholic man, Francis McCloskey, who died one day after receiving severe head wounds by baton wielding RUC thugs. The IRA killed zero civilians that year. The loyalists had been killing civilians since 1966.
They were aiming at replacing the existing political system with a Marxist dictatorship.The Provisional IRA are not Marxist.
Thus, there is not the _slightest_ justification or mitigation for their violent acts.Self-defense.
Since Britain is a democratic nation,Northern Ireland was not democratic.
the IRA violence meant that Protestant civilians - and Catholic civilians who didn't toe the IRA line, which is to my mind the definitive proof the IRA were terrorists and not freedom fighters - died, but life was safe for Catholic civilians.You are seriously mistaken in your facts. The loyalists were not reacting to the IRA, it was the other way around. Loyalists killed the first civilians in 1966, loyalists set off the first bombs, loyalists killed the first policeman.
That the murders committed by the UDA came from the frustration that engendered is hardly surprising. Murders they still were, but one could think of the Allied bombing of Dresden as a comparison of sorts.
I found it regrettable that Britain found itself unable to simply liquidate the IRA and instead an agreement involving an amnesty for murders was reached.Whatever your opinions on the IRA, you should at least generate them on the basis of fact; rather than fiction.
<snip>
Russ
03/30/2002-
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