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| 7/10 |
| 2005/7/7-8 [Politics/Domestic/911] UID:38468 Activity:high |
7/7 Isn't it amazing that Timothy McVeigh's 1 bomb killed 168 people in
open space, but 4 bombs in the London tunnel killed 1/4 of that? Thank
god Al Qaeda isn't compenent enough to build McVeigh-strength bombs.
\_ there's nothing complicated about a truckload of ANFO. Al queda
could easily do the same thing.
\_ Al Qaeda didn't use any bombs on 9/11.
\_ It's pretty tricky to get a Ryder truck on the subway.
\_ The IRA set of a truck bomb (with ~1 ton of fertilizer) in the
City of London in 1993. That was on a Saturday morning, and only
1 was killed. (I actually went to a meeting near Bishopsgate the
day before the bomb went off.) In comparison, the McVeigh bomb
had ~3 tons of fertilizer, and it was set off on a Wednesday
morning. The McVeigh bomb killed 168 people.
\_ I heard the IRA used to call the police to give out warning for
evacuation between when a bomb was planted and when it would go
off.
\_ Actually, the IRA would call and warn for evacuation and
sometimes there was no bomb. I was in Covent Garden for one
of these. My fellow employees explained this happened
frequently. The truth was planting actual bombs was a losing
affair for the IRA. Causing a disturbance without the negative
vibe from actually injured/killed people was working for them
pretty well. It's still FUBAR if you ask me but quite
different from my perceptions when all I knew about it was
what I learned from the news. -- ulysses
\_ The London police was in the middle of evacuating the City
when the bomb went off. I am not sure if the information
source was an illicit informer or back channel. The IRA
even used to apologize when their bombs accidentally kill
kids.
\_ If you set off a bomb it doesn't "accidentally" kill
children. Sorry, buzz. A random terrorist bombing kills
people big and small. Fuck the IRA pretending they
are better than any other terrorists.
\_ The IRA kills a lot fewer people by accident than
the US Air Force does. Fuck the Air Force pretending
they are better than other terrorists.
\_ Be careful Jim. They are watching liberals like you.
\_ Oh boo hoo, I am really fucking scared of idiots
like you, Mark. Call the FBI and tell them I
said something bad about the Air Force on the
motd.
\_ Oh fuck you with a broken broomstick. If you can't
understand the difference between war and PUTTING A
FUCING BOMB IN THE MIDDLE OF CIVILIANS INTENTIONALLY
go choke on a broken-glass sandwich.
\_ The Air Force deliberately puts bombs in the
middle of civilian places all the time. Why
is that okay, in your book of moral relavancy?
Was firebombing Dresden a war crime or not?
I am sure the IRA killed far fewer civilians
per bomb attack than the Air Force does.
\_ [insert "Dresden was transit hub for German
troops" vs. "Dresden was cultural center"
debate here]
\_ Very simple. The US Military wears
uniforms, and operates by the rules of war.
Terrorists do not. This is why you extend
Geneva to soldiers but not terrorists. This
is why civilian casualties in war is a different
animal from terrorist casualties. There is
also the matter of intent. The US Military
doesn't want to harm civilians, and is going to
extraordinary lengths (unheard of throughout
history) to avoid harming civilians, even if
this means putting its soldiers under extra
risk. Terrorists harm civilians as a goal.
There is a difference in law between
manslaughter and first degree murder for a
reason. Finally, learn to fucking spell.
-- ilyas
\_ yeah, this is why we use napalm. to
avoid civilian casualties.
\_ Napalm has its legitimate war use.
But of course you never bothered to
read or study the lengths at which
the military avoids collateral
damage. Your frame of thought is
one life accidently killed is too much.
I hope one day you are a plane with
Al-queda when it dawns on you that this
is a numbers game.
\_ I disagree. Mass civilian casualties was the
\_ Bullshit. Mass civilian casualties was the
stated intent of the firebombings of Dresden
and Tokyo. And we are discussing the IRA,
which went out of its way to avoid civilian
casualties, too, not some mythical
"terrorist" bogeyman you dreamed up.
Deliberate targeting of civilians is
always a crime. And killing civilians,
except in self-defence, always should be.
The War in Iraq was in no sense a war
of self-defence.
\_ Wait. The IRA went out of its way to
avoid civilian casualties when it
planted bombs? That's a new one on me.
What do you suppose the purpose of those
bombs was for? What was the intended
target? -- ilyas
\_ Knee-jerk uninformed "US army = teh
ghei baby kilerz" b.s. aside, he's
actually right--the IRA's main point
was to show "hey, look what we can do,
whenever we feel like it." Civilian
casualties, like at Hiroshima, were an
"oh yeah, by the way" sort of thing.
Unlike ETA, which wants to kill
civilians. And Dresden _was_ part of
a deliberate campaign to both disrupt
strategic communications and terrorize
people--a legitimate but regrettably
uninformed and ill-conceived goal at
the time. Do yourself a favor and
ignore the "everything the US does is
terrorist" trolls. -John
\_ http://csua.org/u/cn0
See table 2.
The IRA targeted the British
Army, RUC and UCR, mostly.
http://csua.org/u/cn1 (PBS)
Okay, this analysis is biased,
but it gets to the heart of it.
\_ The problem is terrorists don't kill
enough people with their bombs. The
US and its allies was able to kill
hundreds of thousands in a single
bombing run. It's like that quote:
"Kill a man, and you are a murderer.
Kill millions of men, and you are a
conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are
a god." Or Stalin: "one death is a
tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic"
In order to be legitimate, they'd need
to wipe out large chunks of cities
on a regular basis.
The IRA targetted the British
military and RUC, mostly. |
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| csua.org/u/cn0 -> cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/docs/hayes/hayes00.htm Page Compiled: Fionnuala McKe nna Material is added to this site on a regular basis - information on this p age may change Sowing Dragons Teeth: Public Support for Political Violence and Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland* Bernadette C Hayes Department of Sociology Queen's University Belfast BT7 1NN United Kingdom Ian McAllister Research School of Social Sciences Australian National University Canberra ACT 2600 Australia A paper prepared for the meetings of the UK Political Studies Association , London School of Economics and Political Science, 10-13 April 2000. Abstract While much attention has been devoted to political efforts to solve the N orthern Ireland problem, less attention has been given to the role of po litical violence in sustaining the conflict. In this paper, we argue tha t one of the reasons for the intractability of the conflict is widesprea d exposure to political violence among the civil population. By 1998, th irty years after the conflict started, one in seven reported being a vic tim of violence; Such exposure to violenc e exists alongside support for paramilitarism among a significant minori ty of both communities. Using 1998 survey data, we show that exposure to violence serves to enhance public support for paramilitary groups, as w ell as to reduce support for the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons . Overall, the results suggest that only a lengthy period without politi cal violence will undermine support for paramilitarism and result in the decommissioning of weapons. Sowing Dragons Teeth: Public Support for Political Violence and Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland These creatures Aeetes ordered him to yoke and to sow dragon's teeth; for he had got from Athena half of the dragon's teeth which Cadmus sowed in Thebes And when he had sowed the teeth, there rose armed men from the g round... Jason and the Argonauts The most visible and dramatic manifestation of the post-1968 Northern Ire land conflict has been political violence. Comparative studies show that Northern Ireland is easily the most important violent conflict in Europ e, accounting for the majority of terrorist incidents in Europe (US Secr etary of State, 1999). The various paramilitary organizations that opera te in the province are the most highly organized and equipped in Europe, particularly on the republican side. The statistics of violence suggest that in its duration and intensity relative to population size, the con flict approaches that of a war rather than a local insurgency, with subs tantial numbers of the population being exposed to many aspects of the v iolence, from intimidation and physical injury, to being caught up in a bomb explosion or riot. Most of the research on the Northern Ireland problem has assumed that the violence is a consequence of the political problem; once a permanent se ttlement between the communities is reached, violence will become irrele vant and swiftly disappear. Less attention has been given to analyzing h ow public exposure to violence serves to mould popular attitudes towards the use of violence as a political tool, and to further engender politi cal violence. In other words, violence may not simply be a consequence o f other (mainly political) things, but it may feed of itself in a contin uous and perpetual cycle. The apparent widespread support for or at the very least, ambiguity towards paramilitary organizations suggests that t here is a significant minority prepared both to condone and to participa te in political violence. It is the role of political violence in sustai ning paramilitary support that is the topic of this paper. Aggregate Patterns of Violence The political violence that Northern Ireland has experienced since 1968 c ontinues a long tradition of violent conflict dating back several centur ies. Secret societies emerged in Ireland in the eighteenth century, usin g direct action to express agrarian discontent. Most were based in the s outh, but they occasionally committed outrages, mainly against unpopular landlords, in the north (Williams, 1973). By the end of the century the secret societies were represented in the north by two sectarian groups, the Peep ODay Boys, who were Protestant, and the Defenders, who were Ca tholic (Clark and Donnelly, 1983). In turn, these groups were replaced b y two organizations with overtly political goals, the Orange Order and t he United Irishmen, respectively (Senior, 1966; The loya list and republican organizations which have employed political violence since 1968 are very much the direct descendants of these agrarian group s, which used similar methods, for similar ends, centuries before. The rapid industrialization of Belfast in the nineteenth century transfer red these rural conflicts into an urban setting. Largely based on linen, and later shipbuilding and engineering, Belfast was one of the first in dustrial cities in the British Isles. The insatiable demand for labour g enerated by these new industries attracted both Protestants and Catholic s from all over the north into Belfast, and their contiguity in working class areas of the city has provided the basis for violent conflict ever since. Throughout the nineteenth century Belfast was the scene of perio dic communal rioting, causing around 60 deaths (Budge and OLeary, 1973). The widespread disturbances that accompanied the 1886 Home Rule Bill re sulted in 86 deaths across the province, many of them in Belfast (OLeary and McGarry, 1993: 21). Successive observers of the conflict have noted the importance of the urban interfaces between the two communities as t he touchstone for the conflict; for the most part, these interfaces were established during the nineteenth century. The post-1968 violence dwarfs any previous conflict in scale, intensity a nd duration. In addition, over 40,000 people have been injured, representing almost 3 percent of the po pulation. If we extrapolate these figures to Britain, some 111,000 peopl e would have died, with 14 million people injured. This represents just under half of British deaths (265,000) during the Second World War. Fur ther extrapolating the deaths to the United States, some 526,000 would h ave died, more than died during the Second World War (405,000) and nine times the American war dead in Vietnam. The large number of incidents underlines the intensity of the conflict, w ith over 35,000 shooting incidents and nearly 15,000 bomb explosions. Such levels of violence, maintained over a long period of time , have inevitably drawn many people into the paramilitary organizations. Estimates of paramilitary membership are difficult to make, but police statistics show that since 1972, over 17,000 people have been charged wi th terrorist offences, and it is likely that more people in Northern Ire land have participated in illegal paramilitary organizations than at any time since the United Irishmen rising of 1798. Once again, extrapolatin g these figures to Britain or the US show the intensity of the violence; shooting incidents alone would have numbered over 1 million in Britain, and over 5 million in the United States. Around half a million British people would have been charged with a terrorist offence, and nearly 28 million Americans. By any standards, what Ulster people euphemistically call the Troubles is, in fact, a war. Table 1: The Scale of the Political Violence, 1969-1998 Estimates (000s) N Ireland Britain United States Deaths 3,289 111 526 Injuries 41,837 1,406 6,673 Shooting incidents 35,669 1,188 5,161 Bomb explosions 15,246 503 2,388 Persons charged with terrorist offences 18,258 589 2,797 Note Figures for persons charged with terrorist offences date from 3 1 July 1972. In the early stage of the conflict, the Official IRA was active in violenc e, but they regarded most of their operations as defensive and did not e mulate the Provisionals discriminate car bombing campaign that resulted in so many civilian deaths during the early 1970s. The Official IRA decl ared a ceasefire in 1972, and thereafter reduced their military capacity , eventually becoming an entirely political organization by the late 197 0s (OBrien, 1999). At the same time, dissidents ... |
| csua.org/u/cn1 -> www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ira/conflict/violence.html The IRA Campaign of Violence There is a perception that the IRA and other paramilitaries have used mi ndless violence. And, simply put, violence is used as a communicative dimension. It is sa ying to the state or to government, "We are here. You have to talk to u s If we have to bomb our way to a negotiating table, we will." So, ver y rarely do you get examples of mindless violence in the Northern Irela nd context. And when you look at the type of violence, over time it has changed. Bec ause the violence was a classic example of armed propaganda. Sometimes car bombs would be used, which would be simply about causing as much ec onomic destruction as possible, as making Northern Ireland so expensive for the British exchequer that there would be a demand for the British to withdraw. There always was t he belief that the death of one British soldier was worth at least, in propaganda terms, ten policemen from Northern Ireland, because in Brita in itself, the British mainland, the demand to get out would grow. What the IRA tried to do for the most part and what they believed they were doing was that they were not trying to harm the local community. If they killed a Protestant, they would argue that it wasn't a Protestant they were killing, but it was a member of the security forc es who happened to be a Protestant. And in their role as purported defenders of the Catholic community, they 've actually succeeded in killing more Catholics than have their oppone nts. And so, when they carry out campaigns of violence against property or against people, in many, many instances what they were doing was th ey were damaging their own people more than they were furthering their cause. Now, that is very important, because the IRA, unlike other terro rist groups around the world, realized, to use the Maoist dictum, that "it needed water for the fish to swim in." The water it needed was the support of the local community. If it lost that support, its campaign is going to run into the sands. So , it was always very, very conscious that it had to be careful how it u sed its violence. It is worth pointing out that Belfast, for example, never became Beirut. Before the violence occur red, there were usually plenty of warnings. Very rarely could you put y our finger and say that innocent people were targeted deliberately. They were very conscious in their propaganda of how they sold their viol ence. They were always conscious they had to bring their people with th em. When we speak of soft targets we're talking about people or property whi ch are very easy to target, very easy to pick off. And, obviously, the easier they are, the more successful you're going to be. So, they could pick, for example, an isolated Protestant farmer on the border of Nort hern Ireland, who was a member of the local security force on a part-ti me basis. Or, in one instance, the IRA killed a woman who was taking a census collection. She was simply finding out, for the government, how people felt in Northern Ireland. She was shot dead because she worked f or the government. There were literally hundreds of examples of soft targets. They all were to demonstrate that Northern Ire land was ungovernable. Bloody Friday (July 21 1972) Bloody Friday was important in demonizing the IRA. Bloody Friday happens within four months of the imposition of direct rule, when Unionists ha d lost out, when there were people saying, "Let's call it a day. The IRA response to Bloody Friday was that it was n't they who got it wrong, that they gave the warnings. It was the auth orities who got it wrong, that they did not mean to kill those innocent civilians. Whatever way you look at it, it was a very important event, because what it did was that it distanced those in the Unionist commun ity who might have been prepared to give some thought to doing deals wi th people in the Catholic community ... It reinforced the position of the Protestant paramilitaries, and made th em a real force in the political game in Northern Ireland. It reinforce d the fanatical voice of Protestant militism, some of those who claim t hat they were not, or didn't approve of violence, but used violent lang uage. What it did was that it polarized the situation very, very badly. It persuaded the British government that you cannot do business with the Republican movement. So, for all of those reasons, Bloody Friday had v ery serious consequences. The Murder of Lord Mountbatten August, 1979 In August of 1979 the IRA pulled off two of their huge spectaculars with the murder of Mountbatten, part of the British royal family. But they also killed two young boys in the same boat that he was in. The British authorities were able to make much propaganda out of the death of the two young boys. and they happened to be Briti sh paratroopers, the people who were responsible for Bloody Sunday. So, among their followers, this was a huge, huge victory. But the downside of that was that the soldiers had been killed on the Ir ish border. It was both a win and a loss, but it became a win later on ... at that t ime, immediately after the tenth hunger striker had gone to his death, the Sunday Times did a poll of the world's newspapers, and what they di scovered was a huge switch in opinion from sympathy with the British go vernment, which had lost Lord Mountbatten, which had seen an attempt to blow up its whole Cabinet at Brighton, and what they saw was an insens itive, unthinking government. So, the death of Mountbatten and all the rest of it actually turned out to be a propaganda coup for the IRA rather than a loss for them. The 1987 Enniskillen Bombing When the IRA exploded the bomb in Enniskillen in November of 1987, they did their cause irreparable harm from the military perspective. Because they blew up 11 innocent Protestant civilians in probably the most sac red day of their year commemorating their war dead. So, what it demonst rated to begin with was a total insensitivity of Protestant peoples. Secondly, they tried to claim that this was something which actually had been created by the British. That backfired very badly and they lost o ut very badly in that respect. Thirdly, they lost out electorally insof ar as four of their eight elected representatives were not selected aga in the next election in that area. Fourthly, it led them in the directi on of going into dialogue with the SDLP. The Brighton Bombings The Brighton bombings were very simple and very complex. And, if they could destroy the British government with her, even more so. No where else could it happen that a complete government was being wiped o ut with one bomb. It demonstrated the vulnerability of the British secu rity system. It was a huge propaganda victory for the Republican moveme nt, which they played up very strongly. The London Bombing Campaign The London bombing campaign was simply to bring the war to the British m ainland. It was surprising because previous campaigns in Britain had fa iled because they didn't have the logistics, they didn't have the local support. And in going to London, they were saying to the British polit ical establishment, "We are moving into the heart of your country." It's only much later on in the campaign, when they return to Britain, that it does become effectiv e, with some spectacular failures. In particular, there was a bomb in a British town called Warrenpoint in March of 1992, when two young boys were blown to pieces. The images of those two boys shows how an o rganization which operates through symbolic capital can have that turne d on its head, so that the propaganda that came out of Warrenpoint was, "This is an organization that takes the lives of innocent young childr en." And that impacted very strongly among their own supporters. I thin k that was one of the telling points in actually going for a cease-fire . The second attempt to blow up the British Cabinet occurred in 1991 when the Cabinet was meeting, dealing with the affair in Kuwait. The IRA launched a bomb, a mortar bomb, in the heart of Lond on on Downing Street. One security expert said it was five to ten degre es off. If they got it right, it would have been their greatest s... |