Undercover soldiers 'killed unarmed civilians in Belfast'

Disgusting to you, maybe. I thinks it's ok. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, and all that.

You think pressuring people, against their own free will, to wear the Poppy is ok? What has that got to do with dying for your country?

No one is pressured into doing anything. You started the whole fascism bit, which was pretty much an irrelevance.

Who cares, anyway? Ulster is over for the Army. A fair few people on both sides got killed who shouldn't have - but it's finished with. Got a problem with governance now, Sinn Fein-IRA can go and start blowing stuff up in Brussels - I won't care.

Read the thread...

So that I can suffer a few pages of your Sixth-form debating club, Republican flag waving? No thanks.

We (James and I) consider ourselves Irish, why should we be guilted/pressured into supporting the veterans of Britain's (neo)colonial wars, especially when on our community has an array of personal experiences of grievances with the army? How nonsensical!

And on Iraq, the invasion itself was entirely unjustifiable.

Except that's not what I'm saying you should do at all. I said McClean could have chosen to honour Irish World War veterans. Remebrance Day is not mutually a British thing, and the numerous other Irish players and people from other countries with legitimate greivances against the UK playing in England didn't have a problem with at least showing some respect, rather than snubbing it and then getting into flame wars on Twitter. Continuing to hold petty grudges is never going to solve Northern Ireland's future or mend British-Irish relations, that goes for both nationalists and loyalists.
Also, do you even know what neo-colonialism means? It's the practice of gaining influence in a country by means other than militarily, so by definition there are no veterans of these 'conflicts'. Throwing in a load of buzzwords for the sake of it won't add weight to your position.



Of course it can be justified. There's a moral argument, perhaps best advocated by Christopher Hitchens, as well as a tenuous legal argument.

More ammunition for the paranoid IRA sympathisers to use to show how the catholic community were the oppressed victims of the big bad British state.

Stop dragging up the past and get on with your lives. Nobody cares about 10 terrorists being killed 40 years ago.

What an absolutely ridiculous post. I could not have expressed your total lack of knowledge better myself. Last nights documentary addressed issues from 1972. Here is a very basic list of grievances:

In that year alone 14 civilians were murdered in Derry by the British Army. A whitewash of an inquiry chaired by Widgery initially exonerated the army and blamed the innocent victims. It took a 14 year, 200 million pound, inquiry and over 40 years of campaigning to address this issue.

Gerrymandering of political boundaries took place insofar as that a nationalist city like Derry (c. 70% Catholic) had a unionist controlled council.

NICRA was brutally suppressed by a sectarian police force.

Internment was in effect. Diplock trials were common place.

Civilians were killed during operation motorman.

The UDA and the UVF operated with near impunity.

The UDR, basically a sectarian militia operated with impunity. Between 5 & 15% were estimated to be members of loyalist paramilitaries.

The MRF were killing innocent civilians.

In 1971 11 civilians were killed by the army in Belfast.

I could go on ad nauseum. This is merely off the top of my head.

I was more talking about ideologies and who we should be supporting. I'm not saying there weren't or aren't issues in NI, and won't argue with you there, what I'm saying is that doesn't mean the IRA's tactics were okay as a legitimate way of tackling these problems.

I am a pacifist and am by no means justifying the IRAs campaign. But in the same breath I'll condemn any argument that tries to portray the British security forces as neutral arbitrators.

any argument that tries to portray the British security forces as neutral arbitrators.

Any argument for this in Northern Ireland seems odd to me, given that the Army is controlled by the Government and the Government clearly had an interest in Ireland. Though the Army was hardly the savage oppressors they sometimes get portrayed as.

Sorry if that was your interpretation of my post. What I meant was that the British security forces are at least defending a liberal democracy, even if they do wrong in that process. The IRA by contrast, would not create anything close to a democracy and would actually make the situation 10x worse. It kind of reminds me of Palestinian terrorists. I could sympathise for any Palestinian who wants to create a peaceful state alongside Israel because they would and do have legitimate grievances against some of the things Israel has done, but the moment they express support for, or engage in the kind of tactics that people like Arafat or Hamas have engaged in, they lose all credibility. Of course I'm not accusing you of engaging in or supporting terrorism, but my original statement on this thread was that I viewed the British security forces as the people who we should overall support in this conflict (as we should overall support Israel in that conflict), due to the lack of a credible alternative on the other side.

Yes, you are actually correct - a non-military person involved in terrorism is still technically a civilian.

Surprising that the day after it is suggested stopping prosecutions for things done before good Friday, these anonymous stories with no evidence and riddled with inconsistencies come to light.

Could this be an attempt to derail the end to the historical muck-racking that has proved a cash-cow for the republican community and the families of people who took up arms against their own country?

Just to be clear, it is not the argument I originally, or ever, put forward.

I fundamentally disagree. The political wing of the IRA are in government. If you had a shred of evidence for the above I would be interested to discuss it.

The 'liberal democracy' of the UK committed atrocities on a wide scale and as such don't deserve such a degree of differentiation. You are trying to impose an objective moral framework where there is none.

Fair enough. I see your original point- you're basically saying that, from a practical viewpoint, both sides did some bad things, but the British gave a real solution, whereas the IRA just gave rhetoric, for all that their cause was justifiable- right?