Spot on.
A few years back, I thought we (United Kingdom) had made a lot of mistakes with how we dealt with terrorism with regards to the provisional IRA, but I thought fair enough, we might have learnt something from it all. I'm not so sure we have. Thatcher stood firm against the IRA, it didn't work, and almost got her killed. A lot of shady stuff went on, from both sides I might add, but in the end we compromised, and after various cease fires, and negotiating, we seem to heading into more peaceful times, something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime.
That is the weird thing about the IRA, or more precisely the British legal view of them. Under Thatcher terrorists were considered criminals and tried as criminals, under Major and Blair they became POW's. So members of the IRA which under Thatcher were tried and afforded the rights (save for some
slight differences) of criminal defendants, under the later governments they became POW's and were released at the end of hostilities just like any POW would be. Despite the fact that alot of them had alot of time left to serve from their criminal sentences from their terrorist activities.
The Bush administration though seems to be taken a different stance. They are POWs not criminals. But very very special POW's that can be tried and sentenced to death. So they are also criminals but not POWs. I think the phrase is "enemy combatant" which is not a made up phrase at all.
As a military organisation, I don't think Al-Qaeda are a patch on what the IRA were, at least not yet,
Al Qaeda never will be.
The IRA was a organized force with a definitive goals and well trained members. Al Qaeda is a unorganized force with no real goals with completely incompetent members (well especially after the Afghan invasion).
If you look at the attempted attacks against the UK b Al Qaeda that were not stopped by the police or security services you have 7/7 being the only successful one.
Others such as the planned 14/7 were foiled by these apparent master terrorists not storing their explosives right, the shoebomber was stop by civilians restraining him, the last one I heard was foiled by the guy's inability to make a bomb that works and then driving a burning car into an airport almost causing the death of themselves and noone else. These are only the ones I remember but that is a hit rate of at most 25% when you are not counting those caught beforehand.
I don't know what Martin McGuinness' opinion of Al Qaeda in the UK is however I would guess it would go along the lines of "Ha, amateurs". The Afghan war killed any threat from them that would more significant than some lone mad man (like the Unabomber).
but we seem to be doing are damn best to give them more sympathisers and we're practically doing their recruiting for them. If we want it stop, it's quite simple, get out of the middle east, and stop supporting Israel. It wont happen though while the oil is still there unfortunately.
I disagree with the stop supporting Israel. Stop supporting Israel unconditionally would be a better idea.
