nhboy
Ubi bene ibi patria
When is Terrorism not Terrorism? : Lawyers, Guns & Money
"This is an easy question for Representative Peter King, current Chair of the Homeland Security Committee and defender of the Irish Republican Army, to answer:
“I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States.”
That’s just great, Pete. While my proclivities on the Irish question are of a clear nationalist bent, this is ludicrous. The majority of incidents on this list, limited to Great Britain (it takes no imagination to suggest that a similar list for Ireland would be considerably longer), were done in the name of a “legitimate force battling British repression”. I find it difficult to accept a definition of these events that does not only include, but is limited to, the word “terrorism”.
Yes, it was a “dirty war” on both sides (though I’ve yet to find an empirical example of a “clean war”), but denying that the IRA were terrorists is disingenuous as one chairs a hearing into the supposed “radicalization of American Muslims”. Nearly 30 years ago, King once said: “We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry”, but he forgot to mention Birmingham, London, Manchester, etc. I’m further curious where he would place the Omagh bombing in his convenient taxonomy.
"This is an easy question for Representative Peter King, current Chair of the Homeland Security Committee and defender of the Irish Republican Army, to answer:
“I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States.”
That’s just great, Pete. While my proclivities on the Irish question are of a clear nationalist bent, this is ludicrous. The majority of incidents on this list, limited to Great Britain (it takes no imagination to suggest that a similar list for Ireland would be considerably longer), were done in the name of a “legitimate force battling British repression”. I find it difficult to accept a definition of these events that does not only include, but is limited to, the word “terrorism”.
Yes, it was a “dirty war” on both sides (though I’ve yet to find an empirical example of a “clean war”), but denying that the IRA were terrorists is disingenuous as one chairs a hearing into the supposed “radicalization of American Muslims”. Nearly 30 years ago, King once said: “We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry”, but he forgot to mention Birmingham, London, Manchester, etc. I’m further curious where he would place the Omagh bombing in his convenient taxonomy.