The Thursday rant #2
This week’s ranter: is Double-Edged Sword, who prefers to remain anonymous.
Terrorism rules, ok?
Before beginning, I’ll nail my colours to the mast. I find the exercise of violence morally repugnant: its use is only acceptable by a fully accountable state in its duty to protect citizens by necessary and proportionate measures.
But our own government legitimized the carnage of the 7th July. Terrorism is a crime under international law, but as one of a succession of governments, it has been shameless in its preparedness to sacrifice principle to achieve its ends in Northern Ireland. I refer to the release of murderers, the moral equation of British soldiers with IRA and Loyalist terrorists, and the constant flow of concessions negotiated outside the Belfast Agreement in response to Provisional threats, solely to ensure that IRA bombs did not go off in London. Blair sacrificed both UUP and SDLP because they did not have guns. He’s more than willing to institutionalize the most sophisticated terror network in the western world  and watch democracy subverted by its use of criminal proceeds to undermine rival, non-violent parties. (Though to be fair, it wasn’t Blair’s government that used Loyalist terrorists to assassinate Pat Finucane.)
Terrorism is here to stay. When the crossbow was introduced in Europe, allowing commoners to slay Knights by the keep-load, it was declared an abomination by the Pope. This was mirrored by the introduction of the arquebus. So, terrorism is just a tactic that we are unaccustomed to. The exemption of civilians from terror is a recent invention enshrined by twentieth-century Geneva Conventions  nor has it always been observed. Our generation is unused to terror, but times change and societies become desensitized. Soon, only the families will be devastated. We’ll simply shrug our fatalistic shoulders. But this government is not just guilty of hypocrisy: its behaviour has informed terrorists that their actions can be validated, and moreover, that they are effective.
It seems that no one disagrees with you!
or perhaps Mr Harding is on holiday…
DK
I agree. Another way of looking at this is to examine how effective non-violent protest has been under blair. While terrorism and criminality was rewarded in NI, non violent protest in the UK has been ignored. The blair years have seen the biggest public protests in british history (the anti-war demos, the countryside alliance marches, the make poverty history marches and the fuel protests), yet none of them have achieved anything near their own aims.
Currently there is an incentive to violence over non-violence, and this is a sad reflection of the alleged democracy that britain is.
I’m not sure how this qualifies as a rant, picking up on DK’s semi-serious point. It just seems a fair statement of the truth. Not sure why the contributor would want to remain anonymous then, unless he’s a Labour man through and through. Maybe it is Neil Harding. ;)
If anything, Blair’s government has done even more to legitimise terrorism on the mainland, by turning a blind eye to political violence where it keeps the Labour base happy, as with the animal rights ‘activists’ destroying the livelihoods of anyone even tangentially linked with HLS or Darley Oaks farm.
Yes, you’re right. It’s also terrible that the IRA has been given considerable breathing room for its Northern Ireland activities (punishment beatings and so on) in return for not killing people on the mainland.
But there’s a big difference between Islamist terrorism and the IRA. Islamists want to kill the largest number of civilians (because of their analysis of how democracy works). The IRA did kill civilians, but never tried to maximise civilian casualties. The IRA was, however, very rigourous about trying to kill politicians.
I don’t mean to sound cynical, but while the general public is getting blown up politicans steadfastly refuse to surrender to terrorism. The moment a Party Conference gets hit, or a couple of mortars get fired at Downing Street, negotiations were opened up pretty damn quickly.
And, to get into the spirit of the Tory conference, let us not forget that even as the Blair government was releasing people who had murdered a bunch of human beings, they were criminalising other people simply for killing farmland vermin – and while they were doing that were accepting donations from groups involved in the torture of animals in the name of science, refusing to lower time limits on the killing of unborn children, launching an unnecessary and illegal war in which tens of thousands have been killed, and condoning torture of human beings to try and gain evidence to justify their actions.
Hurrah!
Surely somebody violently disagrees with this Rant? I mean, I waited to comment because I was trying to avoid doing a ‘Me Too’ type one, but…
(Andrew, I think you’re right. Harding is really just an agent provocateur. Only rational explanation.)
I’m sorry Nikolai, but the idea that the IRA never deliberately targetted civilians is wrong, although it is a popular misconception. I don’t know how to hyper link on this, but you should check this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Friday
and this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsmill_massacre
and that is not to mention Teebane, Enniskillen or La Mons.
The La Mons hotel incident was particularly shocking. The IRA used a homemade flamethrower to incinerate a party of people. If memory serves correctly 13 people were melted and it was something like an RSPCA do or the like. Its a side effect of a brilliant Sinn Fein PR campaign that makes out that the IRA were honourable soldiers.
Chris;
I think you misread my post. I at no point said the “IRA never deliberately targetted civilians”. I said the IRA “never tried to maximise civilian casualties”. I’m not trying to make out the IRA are saints.
I’m sorry Nikolai for misreading your comments. I guess I was just jumping to conclusions. Its just that I find it very hard to distinguish between deliberately targetting civilians and the idea that they did not try to maximise casualties. I think that when they went after an civilian economic target, say Canary Wharf, they wanted to achieve maximum destruction, and the two guys killed in ’96 were simply viewed as collateral. But when you look at the cases where they targetted civilians as in human beings, they did a pretty good job of maximising casualties.
In Belfast today things are reasonably peaceful and the rule of law is interrupted by only the occasional riot or bank robbery with hardly any fatalities. In many parts of Iraq the terrorist slaughter of civilians is interrupted only by the occasional airstrike, and significant parts of the country’s basic infrastructure aren’t working.
Am I the only person here who thinks that the Stormont strategy has worked much better than the Falluja strategy, and that negotiation with terrorists who have the support of a large area of the population is the only way to disarm them in the long run?
Oh, and another reason to negotiate with the IRA: what they wanted and complained of isn’t entirely unreasonable; a united Ireland isn’t a total abomination in the way that Taliban Afghanistan was, and there had been human rights violations (they wouldn’t have been called that at the time, but the thought is the same) by British troops and police against the Catholic community. That was their justification for terroism, and it could be taken away from them.
I’d quite like to negotiate with the London bombers, simply to find out what if anything they want. They seem to be nihilists.
Firstly, the Blair government didn’t start negotiation with the IRA – successive governments have gone down that route because it was they considered that it was the only way. I think that it is ridiculous to say that fundamentalist extremists blew themselves up in London because the British government legitimised terrorism by negotiating with the IRA.
That rather assumes that Middle Eastern fundamentalists know about, or give a monkey’s about, a relatively minor fracas in a relatively small area of the globe.
And it assumes also that the actions of the British government will inform and shape the response of world politics, rather than, say, the actions of the US government. Using that example, perhaps you could say rather that the actions of the US government in negotiating with the Palestinians is rather more significant, especially for the region.
It further assumes that the twisted unfortunates who blew themselves up in London wanted to negotiate, or that the aim of fundamentalist terrorism is to negotiate something.
Well, I think we’d be best advised to assume that the London terrorists wanted by blowing themselves up to achieve something beyond random murder and suicide. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that they were the representatives of a wider movement, rather than random crazies motivated by this week’s fundamentalist propaganda and bomb-making instructions from their local library. So, what are they trying to do?
It’s possible that their aims can only be achieved by violence (for instance, if they wanted to kill everyone in London) or more generally that their aims are so incompatible with public opinion here that they could never be accomodated (for instance, if they want Britain to impose Islamic law). Equally, they might want to achieve some aim which is conceivable (withdrawing British forces from Iraq, say).
Now, in the first and second cases negotiation isn’t going to achieve a settlement, but would tell us something about the terrorists which could be useful to us (for this reason I wouldn’t expect them to be open to the possibility of negotiation in that case). In the third case negotiation could lead to a settlement, assuming that the terrorists, once they’d achieved one aim, did not decide to use more violence to achieve future aims; of course, if they have a list of aims and work down them from the most achievable to the least, they’ll swiftly turn into one of the first two categories.
All of this is of course independent of the question of whether we should negotiate with the terrorists (whether the question is motivated by ethics or by considerations of future policy), though obviously negotiation is only likely to achieve secondary aims like obtaining intelligence information or splitting up terrorist factions if it appears to have been entered into in seriousness.
1) This is hardly a rant, it is at best a weak link between peace negotiations with one terror group as a form of legitimising terrorism by another group. Which is nonsense.
2) Democratic peace processes do not legitimise terrorism – which is better we did not negotiate with the IRA, they had not decommisioned, they had continued to bomb in Great Britain? – or that we did negotiate?
I agree with the views in the lead post.
I lived in Belfast throughout the troubles, and I know for a fact that outfits such as the IRA, UVF and others are not simply political terrorists but are also a mafia within their own communities and are deeply involved with crime. The butchery of McCartney in the Short Strand area of Belfast is an example of the type of violence they resort to at short notice.
Their stated political objectives were pursued at the cost of laying waste to entire neighbourhoods in Ulster, turning the province into a fortress of fear and destroying families. That Blair has gone so far down the road of compromise with terrorists, is quite simply wrong and repugnant. I find it ironical that he has British troops in Iraq at present taking on an insurgency that has little to do with any threat to the British mainland.
I’m not a fan of the Orange Order or extreme Unionism, but I will say this … the sons of loyalist Ulster families gave their lives in many wars for flag and Queen. It’s little wonder the descendents of these people feel a deep sense of betrayal.
The recent riots on the Shankill and the show of fire power by the UVF is an example of the fear and desperation felt by protestant working class communities, in the face of a power shift that has essentially been stage managed by Downing Street. So we may yet see the UVF becoming the new threat to law and order in the province now that the IRA has given up arms (ostensibly).
Was there discrimination against catholics in Ulster? Yes, certainly there was. Will the culture and mindset created by the IRA alter as a result of decommissioning and a resurgent Sinn Fein on the political front? Highly unlikely. Same goes for extreme loyalist attitudes. These are entrenched communities and their leaders view democracy as cosmetic. They have acquired power and reached their present position with AK47’s and plastic explosives, and that’s not a lesson easily forgotten.
I think the British should have moved sooner to create a bi-partisan police force genuinely representitive of both communities, then moved forcefully against terrorism on all fronts – catholic and protestant. While doing this, they should have bolstered the middle ground by creating the conditions for moderate parties to emerge and draw people away from the extremist factions.
Pandering to Sinn Fein is wrong – just as pandering to extreme Unionism is wrong. Blair bungled this badly and in my view has created the conditions for civil strife in the furture, because there are constituencies in Ulster that will never accept the concessions that have been handed to Sinn Fein.
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