I see that on last evening’s BBC “Question Time” Shaun “Where’s my butler?” Woodward was trotting out the line that what has happened in Northern Ireland presents a template that should be used to bring ABOUT “peace” in the Middle East. I just wanted to say how utterly trite and disingenuous this is on so many levels and at the risk of being indulgent I would suggest that if you want to understand the unbelievable depravity and moral relativism that Woodward was waxing lyrical about, you could do worse than invest in a copy of my book “Unionism Decayed” which takes apart the appeasement process of which Mr Woodward and the rest of the intelligentsia including the BBC are so proud. Here endeth the commercial!
THE SPURIOUS COMPARISONS
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As I pointed out in the other thread. The British army defeated the IRA, they were left with no where else to go except the negotiation table.
The left (who hate the army) think that all the so called peace work in NI was down to them.
It wasn’t. It was down to the great work of the likes of the SAS taking out the IRA scum.
Until Hamas are beaten to a pulp and see that their ONLY option is to sit down with Israel and talk the fighting must go on.
Martin,
The Army played a magnificent role although they were always handicapped by their political masters. Too many brave soldiers lost their lives to IRA scum. Totally agree with your last sentence, beaten to a pulp and ground into the dirt. Lady Tongue will not be happy with us!!
The socialists just love appeasement dont they?
But hey they cry, if we crawl and creep like dogs before them, see their murderous and cruel side and treat them as moral equals, if we give in and buy them off enough they will stop hating us! Yeah thatll work a treat eh?
BTW the government now employs terrorist sympathisers and fund raisers to advise itself on how to fight extremism, you couldnt make it up in the wildest nightmare.
The government sends our troops to their deaths in a pointless war while negotiating with the terrorists behind the troops backs, one thing never changes, the government will always betray those who fight for it, danegeld worked with the PIRA but if the appeasers think it will work with the followers of the religion of peace(s) they are barking up the wrong tree.
Appeasement is a real problem. Even more so when you hear talk of people in the Bush administration having action taken against the for “war crimes”.
This is problematic in several levels but mostly because actions like this undermine the strength and willingness of any country to defend itself against an enemy (muslim terrorism) that does not have the same limitations around who they attack placed on them by their society.
What Im saying is that at some stage the backbone of Western society has been replaced by soft white squishy stuff!
Mailman
The difference is that nobody cared about NI. The Brits, having better things to worry about, are embarrassed and amused by NI unionists but in the main just don’t want to have to pay for them. When the Irish got rich and stopped caring about NI republicanism that was it. Fortunately most of the protagonists saw the light when they realised that neither “mother country” was going to indulge their ridiculous bullshit.
Unfortunately this isn’t likely to happen in the ME whilst the entire Arab world seems to care more about nuturing persecution complexes via the Palestinians than pursuing their own economic prospects.
David is an expert here, but I understood that a key difference with the terrorism from the IRA and terrorism against Israel is that the IRA did not, as far as I known, wish to impose Catholicism on the world, unlike radical Islam. That alone I would think makes redundant any similar ‘peace’ discussions.
The Northern Ireland peace agreement in 1998 shows that terrorism and violence can only be defeated by discussion and dialogue. It is not a great comparison to Israel right now, but the comparison does exist in the sense that Israel/Palestine will not find peace until there is more discussion and less bombing. The new US President should help ensure that dialogue becomes key, and the sooner that both Hamas and Israel quit acting like infants and hurling rockets at each other then the nearer the region will be to peace.
Bill Buchanan: You are correct. However, in the case of Hamas there is no ‘political solution’ at the moment as Hamas wants to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth (backed by Iran)
My point was that with the IRA the British army prevented them from being able to gain a victory by military means. This provided a solid rock to push the IRA against forcing them to come to the table and negotiate in a serious way. it was either that or be exterminated by the SAS. We now know the IRA was infiltrated with British agents to were informing on the IRA as well.
Israel must keep killing Hamas people until Hamas is either exterminated OR they decided to sit down an do a political deal and not use use a temporary cease fire to rearm which is what Israel expects they probably will do.
I posted this comment at the end of the QT thread below, in response to one of Martin’s comments (basically the same as he said at the top of this thread). It’s more appropriate here:
This is just part and parcel of the BBC editorial policy that the IRA and NI are an analogy for almost any conflict. They’ve been slowly pushing that analogy in Afghanistan (done several segments on it on the radio and on tv), and we saw hints of this a couple weeks back about Israel and Hamas.
(I see Bill Buchanan has bought into this as well.)
They’re consistent, and it’s spread across the spectrum of both domestic and World News.
The real problem is more than the simple idea of appeasement. What’s going on here is that this editorial position must by definition mean that the analogue of the IRA is in the right, and deserving of power in government. Of course, we can all see where that line of thinking leads, as Martin and Cheeta have shown above.
It’s an editorial position entrenched in certain quarters. It’s biased, and wrong.
Well on one level you are right Bill, discussions can lead to peace.
And we are seeing that now with Hamas…only they have been dragged to the table like dogs BECAUSE of Israel’s military might.
Without that big stick, Hamas would be about as willing to talk as Al Beeb is to tell the truth.
Mailman