Sinn Fein? They have gone away, you know.

[sid waddell]

Question for all the Shinnerbots here:

i) Was the Allied campaign in World War II, on the whole, justified? (allowing that some horrible things happened during it)
ii) Was the US/British campaign in Iraq in 2003, on the whole, justified?

Answer the questions, now

I'm not a shinnerbot but just to answer,

1- yes
2- No

But I think the issue is you claimed the PIRA campaign was a Civilian murder campaign. But the stats would be more towards military targets. Therefore given the old IRA also had civilian deaths would it also be considered a civilian murder campaign?

So you accept that one war can be plausibly justified and another cannot

I accept that too

Civilian murders take place in all wars, in the War of Independence, the PIRA campaign, World War II, and Iraq

But as we now accept, World War II and Iraq are not morally equivalent

And neither are the War of Independence and the PIRA campaign morally equivalent

The PIRA knew they had no hope whatsoever of winning - they knew this early, and yet they kept going for 28 years

Again I ask for exact statistics about civilian murders in the War of Independence - how many, when, where, and the views of historians of them

The PIRA murdered 644 civilians over 28 years as well as over a thousand others and did so right up to the end in a campaign they never had a hope of winning and which did nothing except inflict societal devastation

When I ask what was it for, the answer can only be nothing

And Warrenpoint and Teebane and Deal and the many boob trap car bombs on RUC officers were just as futile as the civilian murder, killing for the sake of killing

And therefore the moral justification for the campaign is non-existent and those who waged it should live with the knowledge and the shame that they did nothing except bring devastation to their areas and the areas of many others

This is the central denial at the heart of Sinn Fein today, they refuse to accept this

The PIRA were hated by the people of the south who saw right through them and in the north the SDLP consistently polled way above them - the people of the north also saw through them

Slow learners indeed

[Franko]

Yeah

You still haven't answered

[sid waddell]

Question for all the Shinnerbots here:

i) Was the Allied campaign in World War II, on the whole, justified? (allowing that some horrible things happened during it)
ii) Was the US/British campaign in Iraq in 2003, on the whole, justified?

Answer the questions, now

And you were banging on that questions about the Old IRA were irrelevant to the subject matter.

Nonetheless, I'll indulge you.

i) Yes
ii) No

Now, back to your question

So you accept that one war can be justified and another cannot

You now accept the premise that equating the War of Independence to the PIRA campaign in terms of moral justifiability is just as stupid as equating World War II to Iraq in terms of moral justifiability

That they are not the same

Civilian slaughter of course occurred in the War of Independence and that can never be justified

But the overall campaign has a plausible claim to moral justifiability in a way the PIRA campaign does not - in the same way that the Allied campaign of World War II has a claim of moral justification while the Iraq War does not

[trueblue1234]

Question for all the Shinnerbots here:

i) Was the Allied campaign in World War II, on the whole, justified? (allowing that some horrible things happened during it)
ii) Was the US/British campaign in Iraq in 2003, on the whole, justified?

Answer the questions, now

I'm not a shinnerbot but just to answer,

1- yes
2- No

But I think the issue is you claimed the PIRA campaign was a Civilian murder campaign. But the stats would be more towards military targets. Therefore given the old IRA also had civilian deaths would it also be considered a civilian murder campaign?

So you accept that one war can be plausibly justified and another cannot

I accept that too

Civilian murders take place in all wars, in the War of Independence, the PIRA campaign, World War II, and Iraq

But as we now accept, World War II and Iraq are not morally equivalent

And neither are the War of Independence and the PIRA campaign morally equivalent

The PIRA knew they had no hope whatsoever of winning - they knew this early, and yet they kept going for 28 years

Again I ask for exact statistics about civilian murders in the War of Independence - how many, when, where, and the views of historians of them

The PIRA murdered 644 civilians over 28 years as well as over a thousand others and did so right up to the end in a campaign they never had a hope of winning and which did nothing except inflict societal devastation

When I ask what was it for, the answer can only be nothing

And Warrenpoint and Teebane and Deal and the many boob trap car bombs on RUC officers were just as futile as the civilian murder, killing for the sake of killing

And therefore the moral justification for the campaign is non-existent and those who waged it should live with the knowledge and the shame that they did nothing except bring devastation to their areas and the areas of many others

This is the central denial at the heart of Sinn Fein today, they refuse to accept this

The PIRA were hated by the people of the south who saw right through them and in the north the SDLP consistently polled way above them - the people of the north also saw through them

Slow learners indeed

Stats for the war of independence vary given records weren't as well maintained back then. I think 1400 in total and around 200 civilians. I never argued that war couldn't be justified. I don't agree with your views on a war can be justified by a timeframe. When entering into war the timeframe isn't set. World War II took 6 years, does that make it less justifiable than the WoI? To me that seems a strange way to decide if a war is just.

Edit - actually the number of civilians killed by the Old IRA looks to be significantly higher than I thought.

^{In County Cork between 1920 and 1923 the IRA shot over 200 civilians of whom over 70 (or 36%) were Protestants: five times the percentage of Protestants in the civilian population.}

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army_(1919–1922)

[trailer]

Speaking of repeating things. For the 11th time, Sid:

Would you term the Old IRA campaign as a "civilian/sectarian murder campaign"?

I would call the IRA bombing campaign a senseless attack on innocent civilian people. How can it be anything else?

My uncle was lucky not to be killed in the canary wharf bombing. How this was supposed to help bring in a united Ireland is beyond me

£150m worth of damage to the British Exchequer.

It brought John Major to the negotiating table.

The Brits didn't really care about the loss of life, that's one thing they have in common with Sid.

What brought the IRA to the negotiating table was it's army of informers. Right to the very top of its Army council it was riddled with informers. But hey they were great people. Out to free Ireland. Look what they delivered. Only for them we'd still be under British occupation....

It Donald Trump levels of nonsense it really is. The people who are laughing is SF's new Army community leaders and those elected representatives. Completely unemployable people with little to no intelligence but about to follow simple instructions from the SF elite.

[Fear Bun Na Sceilpe]

Speaking of repeating things. For the 11th time, Sid:

Would you term the Old IRA campaign as a "civilian/sectarian murder campaign"?

I would call the IRA bombing campaign a senseless attack on innocent civilian people. How can it be anything else?

My uncle was lucky not to be killed in the canary wharf bombing. How this was supposed to help bring in a united Ireland is beyond me

£150m worth of damage to the British Exchequer.

It brought John Major to the negotiating table.

The Brits didn't really care about the loss of life, that's one thing they have in common with Sid.

What brought the IRA to the negotiating table was it's army of informers. Right to the very top of its Army council it was riddled with informers. But hey they were great people. Out to free Ireland. Look what they delivered. Only for them we'd still be under British occupation....

It Donald Trump levels of nonsense it really is. The people who are laughing is SF's new Army community leaders and those elected representatives. Completely unemployable people with little to no intelligence but about to follow simple instructions from the SF elite.

Infiltration by the Brits destroyed them along with collusion which enabled loyalists to go into almost every nationalist area without too much trouble . I think up here in Derry was about the only place they didn't touch, they were able to kill Fullerton in Buncrana though, no doubt an MI5 operation. Provos killed lynch and MC kinight in waterside in swift retaliation

This kind of stuff really put republicans on back foot

[Rossfan]

Big difference between the 1919-22 IRA and the 1970/05 IRA was informers.
The 1919/21 crew infiltrated Dublin Castle and finished off the Cairo gang.
As Trailer said the Provos were seriously infected with informers right up to the top informer catcher.
As for Narrow water and Kilmichael I have no great problem with either - an elite group of professional soldiers were attacked in the middle of a conflict.
Meanwhile time for Sid and Angelo to do a Brian Stanley and stay off GAAboard for a week.

[johnnycool]

Sid doesn't deal with the truth like most people who share his far right ideology.

The PIRA were far right, mate

Sectarian slaughter and extreme nationalism is inherently far right

You can't sit underneath a picture of Michael Collins and not understand that Collins was the architect of guerrilla warfare attacks on the British which also resulted in civilian deaths.

If that is wrong in the 70's, 80's and 90's then it was also wrong in the 20's and before.

[michaelg]

Big difference between the 1919-22 IRA and the 1970/05 IRA was informers.
The 1919/21 crew infiltrated Dublin Castle and finished off the Cairo gang.
As Trailer said the Provos were seriously infected with informers right up to the top informer catcher.
As for Narrow water and Kilmichael I have no great problem with either - an elite group of professional soldiers were attacked in the middle of a conflict.
Meanwhile time for Sid and Angelo to do a Brian Stanley and stay off GAAboard for a week.

What are your views on the "shoot to kill" policy"?  Always seemed that it was only ever a "war" when it suited the Republican movement.

[johnnycool]

Big difference between the 1919-22 IRA and the 1970/05 IRA was informers.
The 1919/21 crew infiltrated Dublin Castle and finished off the Cairo gang.
As Trailer said the Provos were seriously infected with informers right up to the top informer catcher.
As for Narrow water and Kilmichael I have no great problem with either - an elite group of professional soldiers were attacked in the middle of a conflict.
Meanwhile time for Sid and Angelo to do a Brian Stanley and stay off GAAboard for a week.

You are aware that this is questionable in the bigger picture as the Brits doubled down on their intelligence post Bloody Sunday and if anything their intelligence improved.

There's a lot of similarities between the treaty talks in 1921 and the peace process in 1994.

Both Collins and the IRA leadership in both periods knew they couldn't win militarily and needed something to show for their efforts and cut a deal that didn't deliver the end goal but was a step further.
Collins got/was given the 26 but the 1994 version was only given the possibility of a UI referendum. The last step will be the biggest and IMO the soundings around a UI referendum are a lot more further forward thanks to Brexit but and I will repeat this that Sinn Fein should not be involved in that process unless they are in government in the South.

When the time comes for a UI referendum Sinn Fein will do more harm than good in getting main stream protestant/unionist buy in for it, the drivers for that need to be from the current incumbents in FF/FG but sadly Martin is worse than useless, and Varadkar lacks a little bit of substance. Coveney is probably the most capable at the minute.

As for the effectiveness of informers in the PIRA, they were undoubtedly there but as the Canary Wharf bomb showed they were still able to get big operations off the ground. There's no doubt in my mind and it is well documented that Major was visited by the big Banks based in the City of London and told to sort it out. The back channels were already in operation and came to the forefront after that.
If the provos had been so badly riddled with informers then there's no way that bomb would have been allowed to happen.

[HiMucker]

Big difference between the 1919-22 IRA and the 1970/05 IRA was informers.
The 1919/21 crew infiltrated Dublin Castle and finished off the Cairo gang.
As Trailer said the Provos were seriously infected with informers right up to the top informer catcher.
As for Narrow water and Kilmichael I have no great problem with either - an elite group of professional soldiers were attacked in the middle of a conflict.
Meanwhile time for Sid and Angelo to do a Brian Stanley and stay off GAAboard for a week.

What are your views on the "shoot to kill" policy"?  Always seemed that it was only ever a "war" when it suited the Republican movement.

In my own personal opinion Michael, as grim as it's sounds, and I'm sure if it was one my family members it might change my view, I would have no problem with the shoot to kill policy if the Brits admitted it was a war. But they don't. So you can't have a government killing their own unarmed citizens.

[Angelo]

Big difference between the 1919-22 IRA and the 1970/05 IRA was informers.
The 1919/21 crew infiltrated Dublin Castle and finished off the Cairo gang.
As Trailer said the Provos were seriously infected with informers right up to the top informer catcher.
As for Narrow water and Kilmichael I have no great problem with either - an elite group of professional soldiers were attacked in the middle of a conflict.
Meanwhile time for Sid and Angelo to do a Brian Stanley and stay off GAAboard for a week.

You are aware that this is questionable in the bigger picture as the Brits doubled down on their intelligence post Bloody Sunday and if anything their intelligence improved.

There's a lot of similarities between the treaty talks in 1921 and the peace process in 1994.

Both Collins and the IRA leadership in both periods knew they couldn't win militarily and needed something to show for their efforts and cut a deal that didn't deliver the end goal but was a step further.
Collins got/was given the 26 but the 1994 version was only given the possibility of a UI referendum. The last step will be the biggest and IMO the soundings around a UI referendum are a lot more further forward thanks to Brexit but and I will repeat this that Sinn Fein should not be involved in that process unless they are in government in the South.

When the time comes for a UI referendum Sinn Fein will do more harm than good in getting main stream protestant/unionist buy in for it, the drivers for that need to be from the current incumbents in FF/FG but sadly Martin is worse than useless, and Varadkar lacks a little bit of substance. Coveney is probably the most capable at the minute.

As for the effectiveness of informers in the PIRA, they were undoubtedly there but as the Canary Wharf bomb showed they were still able to get big operations off the ground. There's no doubt in my mind and it is well documented that Major was visited by the big Banks based in the City of London and told to sort it out. The back channels were already in operation and came to the forefront after that.
If the provos had been so badly riddled with informers then there's no way that bomb would have been allowed to happen.

The big problem is FF and FG are both partitionist parties. They have created an elite Catholic ruling class in the 26 and neither FF/FG or the DUP/UUP are interested in giving up their ascendancy status in each of the failed states on this island. SF whether you like them or don't, are the only major political party on this island with an appetite for a United Ireland but they are also by far an away now the biggest political party on this island.

[michaelg]

Big difference between the 1919-22 IRA and the 1970/05 IRA was informers.
The 1919/21 crew infiltrated Dublin Castle and finished off the Cairo gang.
As Trailer said the Provos were seriously infected with informers right up to the top informer catcher.
As for Narrow water and Kilmichael I have no great problem with either - an elite group of professional soldiers were attacked in the middle of a conflict.
Meanwhile time for Sid and Angelo to do a Brian Stanley and stay off GAAboard for a week.

What are your views on the "shoot to kill" policy"?  Always seemed that it was only ever a "war" when it suited the Republican movement.

In my own personal opinion Michael, as grim as it's sounds, and I'm sure if it was one my family members it might change my view, I would have no problem with the shoot to kill policy if the Brits admitted it was a war. But they don't. So you can't have a government killing their own unarmed citizens.

So okay if they were armed / on "active service"?

[Rossfan]

As the Brits never admitted they were in a war then they should have first called on the 'armed civilians" to drop their weapons and give themselves up.
Shooting to kill unarmed civilians in Derry on bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, New Lodge, poor Mr Tighe, Majella O'Hare, Aidan McAnespie etc etc were simply terrorist murders.

Weren't the big bomb operations like Canary wharf  done by the South Armagh units where informing was highly unlikely?

[Rossfan]

See my comment on "armed civilians"