Question an Irish Republican

Again, civilians were not directly targeted. If the advance warnings had been given in the time needed then the innocent civilians wouldn't have been injured. Take the London Docklands bombing or the 1996 Manchester bombing - the advance warnings were taken and people evacuated, so no deaths.

The presence or absence of advance warnings doesn't excuse the initial targeting.

Also, if that targeting was of "legitimate military targets" (e.g. British soldiers) but with the likelihood of ordinary civilians being present - e.g. at a public ceremony held on the main road through the town - then again you are not excused.

This is why nationalism makes you stupid. To think that cultures are somehow in competition is ridiculous; the idea of cultural superior is pretty much as daft as you can get. Equally the possessiveness really hacks me off: "our own" language and all that nonsense.

I appreciate this is probably an attempt at humour, but it's the sort of jokes that highlight and entrench deep divisions.

Omagh was the Real IRA after the ceasefire, and was not directed at civilians but at the economy/infrastructure although the bomb planters who telephoned the advance warning accidentally gave the name of a street that didn't exist. Again, these were dissidents.

Enniskillen was a badly-planned attack aimed at soldiers in the parade. Although IRA units were given "a degree of operational autonomy" at the time, they were supposed to have such large attacks sanctioned by IRA Northern Command, which they did not.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army have never officially admitted responsibility for the Birmingham pub bombings, but a former senior officer of the organisation confessed to their involvement in 2014, with an admission the bombings "went against everything we [the Provisional Irish Republican Army] claimed to stand for". The bombings had not been sanctioned by the PIRA leadership.
Reportedly, those who planted these bombs then walked to a preselected phone box to telephone the advance warning to security services; however, the phone box had been vandalised, forcing the caller to find an alternative phone box and thus shortening the amount of time police had to clear the locations.

This is why nationalism makes you stupid. To think that cultures are somehow in competition is ridiculous; the idea of cultural superior is pretty much as daft as you can get. Equally the possessiveness really hacks me off: "our own" language and all that nonsense.

I appreciate this is probably an attempt at humour, but it's the sort of jokes that highlight and entrench deep divisions.

At the risk of destroying the cheery ambience of this thread, that's a pile horse-poo. These grand principles get stated, but then it's only a few questions before it collapses into a lot of "oh, well, but, the phonebox was out of order". Really?

As George Orwell once pointed out, "the nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them".

Even if we are to go down the crazy ideological rabbit hole and suggest that shooting British soldiers on British streets is somehow not murder (quite how a civilian police force also qualifies, I'm not sure), the case still collapses.

Not only under the weight of the Birmingham bombing or any of the other well-known atrocities. Not even on the premeditated kidnap and torture of "the enemy" that would not be accepted in any civilised understanding of warfare. But under the weight of the individual atrocities meted out against "their own". The old woman who did her civic duty and helped the police and was murdered, the Roman Catholic who was forced to become a human bomb or see his family slaughtered, the young man condemned as "anti-social" and mutilated according to some peculiar interpretation of justice that owes rather more to the pseudo-Islamic dictatorships of the east than they do to Ireland's history or culture.

These are civilians and the IRA was not some sort of alternative government to them: it was a lawless street-gang. It controlled by fear, it caused untold suffering, it set Northern Ireland back by generations.

At the risk of destroying the cheery ambience of this thread, that's a pile horse-poo. These grand principles get stated, but then it's only a few questions before it collapses into a lot of "oh, well, but, the phonebox was out of order". Really?

As George Orwell once pointed out, "the nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them".

Even if we are to go down the crazy ideological rabbit hole and suggest that shooting British soldiers on British streets is somehow not murder (quite how a civilian police force also qualifies, I'm not sure), the case still collapses.

Not only under the weight of the Birmingham bombing or any of the other well-known atrocities. Not even on the premeditated kidnap and torture of "the enemy" that would not be accepted in any civilised understanding of warfare. But under the weight of the individual atrocities meted out against "their own". The old woman who did her civic duty and helped the police and was murdered, the Roman Catholic who was forced to become a human bomb or see his family slaughtered, the young man condemned as "anti-social" and mutilated according to some peculiar interpretation of justice that owes rather more to the pseudo-Islamic dictatorships of the east than they do to Ireland's history or culture.

These are civilians and the IRA was not some sort of alternative government to them: it was a lawless street-gang. It controlled by fear, it caused untold suffering, it set Northern Ireland back by generations.