Quote:
Originally posted by theknife
you don't read much, period - and neither does Sinner. the only issue i'm talking about here is whether the war in Iraq has been an effective strategy in the war on terror. you guys seems to have a little trouble grasping the thread here...
Sinner got a little side-tracked by my use of the IRA as an example. your pals in the White House consider them a terrorist group, but the one-man's-terrorist-is-another-man's-freedom-fighter argument is a whole 'nother thread.
the point remains: while the war in Iraq has was sold to the world as a strategic necessity in the war on terror, to date, there is only evidence to the contrary.
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Your crystal ball is wrong knife...I do read....so do you by the looks of it, to bad you read a bunch of non-sense and buy into it.
Your link doesn't work (
http://library.nps.navy.mil/home/tgp/rira.htm), but I notice it says RIRA in it. If you had any idea at all on what you were taking about you would know the RIRA and the IRA are two different groups.
EDIT---- I am not going to say the IRA never used violence because we have, but to say the IRA is a terrorist movement is darn right retarded.
Little quote from a PPS doc...\
There is a perception that the IRA and other paramilitaries have used mindless violence. That is very far from the truth. The violence has always been used for a purpose.
And, simply put, violence is used as a communicative dimension. It is saying to the state or to government, "We are here. You have to talk to us. If we have to bomb our way to a negotiating table, we will." So, very rarely do you get examples of mindless violence in the Northern Ireland context.
And when you look at the type of violence, over time it has changed. Because the violence was a classic example of armed propaganda. Sometimes car bombs would be used, which would be simply about causing as much economic destruction as possible, as making Northern Ireland so expensive for the British exchequer that there would be a demand for the British to withdraw. Or they would target British soldiers. There always was the belief that the death of one British soldier was worth at least, in propaganda terms, ten policemen from Northern Ireland, because in Britain itself, the British mainland, the demand to get out would grow.
--It is worth pointing out that Belfast, for example, never became Beirut. There was a control to most of the violence. Before the violence occurred, there were usually plenty of warnings. Very rarely could you put your finger and say that innocent people were targeted deliberately.
They were very conscious in their propaganda of how they sold their violence. They were always conscious they had to bring their people with them.