Shooting someone dead is not inherently unlawful. Having a policy to apply lethal force is not unlawful. Making a policy decision to kill people who are unarmed, in all circumstances, would be unlawful but no evidence has ever emerged that any such order was given by any minister of the crown or senior officer with command authority.
In Loughgall, eight IRA terrorists attacked a police station with automatic weapons and a huge bomb placed in the bucket of a digger, with the intention of demolishing the station and killing all the police officers inside. The IRA team did crash through the gates and set off the bomb, causing a large part of the station to collapse. It was then that the SAS opened fire.
All of the members of the SAS were armed, all had been involved in multiple previous crimes of murder and terrorism. The SAS didn't gun down unarmed people, they fired at men who were experienced terrorists who were armed and had already commenced the attack on the police station, and who were well aware of the risks of carrying out an act of terrorism. A gun battle ensued, and predictably the IRA lost. For the seven who died at the police station, there is no question their killing was lawful and the decision to use force to stop them was lawful.
For the one terrorist who ran across a field, the question of whether he was lawfully killed is an open one; it depends entirely on the facts which are very much in dispute. If he was still armed when he was killed, or the SAS member who killed him was in genuine fear of his life or held a genuine belief this IRA member could cause immediate violence to innocents, then the killing was lawful.
But no serious legal commentator would assert that what happened at the police station, and the command decision to deploy the SAS, was wrong in law. You need to learn to separate your emotional hard left (or fellow traveller) attachment to "anti-imperialist" causes from the objective facts of the situation.
By the way, the IRA can't claim they are soldiers not criminals, who should be treated like POWs, and then turn around and complain when they are treated as such. The stench of hypocrisy from the IRA calling themselves soldiers, attacking a police station and losing that battle, then claiming that what happened was some kind of outrage to human dignity, is overwhelming.
Obviously you do not understand the terminology of solidarity used between centre-left parties. Your obvious lack of good faith makes any further comment on this a fool's errand.
Really? The Bloody Friday bombings in 1972 in which the IRA set off 22 bombs in central Belfast, at bus stations, railway stations, banks, bridges, gas department offices, including a 50 pound bomb which exploded outside a row of shops killing two Catholic women, both mothers, and a 14 year old protestant boy.... that didn't cause fear in the Northern Irish community?
The Kingsmill massacre, in which the IRA pulled over a minibus carrying working-class men, builders, on their way home from work, lined up 11 men and shot them for the "crime" of being protestant... that didn't cause fear?
The murder in 1973 (among countless others, too many to mention), of civilians like William Staunton, a 46 year old magistrate, and James Greer, a 21 year old working-class man with no paramilitary affiliations... this didn't cause fear in the community? The death of 24 year old John White in 1974, caught in the crossfire as IRA snipers attacked British soldiers... this also did not cause fear in the community?
Did the following events in 1974 cause fear in the community; the death of Michael McCreesh and Michael Gallagher, boys aged 15 and 18, who were inspecting an IRA-booby trapped abandoned car when it exploded. The death of Adam Johnston, 34, caught in an IRA truck bomb attack. Seumas O'Neill, aged 32, who was unlucky to have driven his tractor over a bomb the IRA had buried and was killed instantly. Asha Chopra, aged 25, killed by IRA sniper fire aimed at British soldiers. These are just a sampling of the IRA attacks that year.
Did the killing of Eamonn Ryan, father of two aged 32, killed by IRA terrorists during a bank robbery in 1979, cause fear in the community? And Colette Mark, killed in 1980 by IRA sniper fire intended for British soldiers? And Heather Pollock, killed in her own home by stray bullets from IRA sniper fire on an RUC unit? What of the Catholic civilian, Joseph Lynn, killed by IRA sniper fire, in 1981?
What about the death of Catholic youth Charles Love, killed by shrapnel from an IRA bomb in 1990? And David Shiels, a protestant civilian with no paramilitary or security affiliations, shot dead by the IRA? And protestant civilian Derek Ferguson, a working-class man whose only "crime" was that his cousin was a well-known protestant unionist preacher?
I could continue through the 1990s, I've only selected a tiny number of events from a few years. The idea that the community was not frightened by the violence of the IRA is idiotic and demonstrates not only a lack of knowledge of the Troubles but also an appalling immaturity and sociopathic contempt for the value of human life.
Throughout most of the Troubles the majority of nationalists supported the SDLP, not Sinn Fein / IRA, precisely because they completely disagreed with the violence and were sick and tired of their streets being turned into a battlefield, and the needless deaths.
That was far less witty than you think. But I suppose you are coming off a very low base of linguistic fluency and flair, so I perhaps I should award marks for effort, no matter how crude and cack-handed it was.
Anyway, I find it's a futile endeavor to continue to engage people who are such perfect exhibitions of Dunning-Kruger, so our conversation ends here.
@KimKallstrom