OUR TIME WILL COME

 

 

 

The BBC’s Peter Taylor, for all his knowledge of the events in Northern Ireland always seems somewhat naïve when it comes to the whole picture…perhaps too caught up in the details to see it in the round?  Not just of Northern Ireland but terrorism generally…..Jihadists and all.

Ever the loyal BBC man he manages to get a dig in at UKIP…associating them with IRA terrorists here (and on the radio this morning):

‘At last month’s Sinn Fein’s ard fheis (party conference), he departed from his prepared speech and scathingly asked: “Where were they when there was a war?”

Interviewing Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly, I got the distinct impression that the party was now rowing back from inflammatory remarks of this kind, perhaps realising that such attacks may be counterproductive. David Cameron is now doing much the same with UKIP.’

 

Suppose that makes a change from the BBC linking them in reports to neo nazis such as the Golden Dawn Party in Greece.　

　

Here is a surprising statement from Taylor:

‘A new generation of young people is being attracted to the dissidents and he (Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris, head of the PSNI’s Crime Operations ) described the process with words that I have come to associate more with Islamist extremists than Irish republicans.

“Radicalisation is happening,” he said.’

So Irish republicans weren’t ‘radicalised’?…you’ve got to be kidding….was it just a day job or something…a career choice.…Tescos or the IRA?

Here is ex IRA member being interviewed in 2005, possibly ironically, by the Boston Globe, considering recent events and Taylor’s comparison to Jihadists:

As a 10-year-old living in British-controlled Northern Ireland, Shane O’Doherty offered himself up to martyrdom.

IN 1965, when he was ten years old he tore a sheet of paper from a notebook he used to copy lessons at school and wrote down a pledge:

“When I grow up, I, Shane Paul O’Doherty, want to fight and, if necessary, die for Ireland’s freedom.”

As he said about the time he became an IRA terrorist, age 15, upon his transformation from nobody to bomber:

‘I was no longer an insignificant teenager. I became heroic overnight. I felt drunk with power.’

　

Radicalised? I’d say so…by being weaned on the ‘rebellion’ from the cradle most likely.

However he has turned to the Church, now training to be a priest….

“I had rejected the Church’s doctrine of a just war,” O’Doherty says. “I had come to believe that only pacifism was truly moral, truly Christlike.”

　

Taylor goes on to say:

‘The problem with the dissidents is that they appear to have no coherent and cohesive political programme.

When all is stripped away, it is “Brits Out” and self determination for the Irish people.’

 

Well yes…that was essentially the IRA’s position….Brits out…and then deal with the politics…implementing Gerry Adam’s cherished socialist utopia.

 

Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing was more about ‘agitation and publicity’ rather than having a conventional political ideology….lacking a political philosophy……other than the usual calls for equality, religious and civil liberty and the pursuit of happiness and prosperity as in the 1916 Proclamation that you might expect from ‘rebels’ there is no ‘coherent and cohesive’ political programme from the IRA.

Even in their ‘peace statement’ the IRA still reiterated this basic aim:

‘Our decisions have been taken to advance our republican and democratic objectives, including our goal of a united Ireland.

We believe there is now an alternative way to achieve this and to end British rule in our country.

The IRA is fully committed to the goals of Irish unity and independence and to building the Republic outlined in the 1916 Proclamation.’

　

　

In 2012 Taylor was asking :

Can Afghanistan learn from Northern Ireland?

Let’s hope not eh?

Still the Taliban don’t seem to have read the script that Taylor laid out:

‘There comes a point in a protracted insurgency or “terrorist” campaign when the combatants recognise that neither is going to defeat the other.

The result is military stalemate.’

 

I guess that’s why the US and Brits will be running from Afghanistan with their tails between their legs having declared ‘victory’ in the next year or so…negotiations or not.

Still Taylor has always been somewhat on the optimistic side….seriously suggesting we can talk and negotiate with Al Qaeda or the Taliban…and produce a peace.

　

To try and end the violence, is it time to engage with al-Qaeda?

 

Here Taylor pushes the line that it is US foreign policy that is the driving force behind Al Qaeda:

‘In reality, the issue is US foreign policy.

In the words of Mike Scheuer – who headed the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit before and after 11 September, 2001, and who warned his superiors about the consequences of invading Iraq – “the only indispensable ally bin Laden has in terms of generating a worldwide Jihad is US foreign policy. Without that, his task is almost insurmountable.” ‘

　

The Arab Spring, especially in Egypt and Syria, disprove that theory……the fundamentalists may have been slow off the mark but they have caught up and are taking over…..and nothing to do with US foreign policy…all domestic.

If it was all about ‘foreign policy’ Iran would also be in the firing line as a supporter of Assad and an aggressor against the Sunnis in Iraq.

The real radicalising moment was 9/11 when Muslims around the world in their enclaves in Western countries and as oppressed peoples in their own countries saw that they could unite and fight together…how many times have we read that a Muslim suddenly became more devout after 9/11?

How many Muslims were cheering in the streets of Britain after 9/11?

As T.E. Lawrence said:

‘Such people demanded a war-cry and banner from outside to combine them, and a stranger to lead them, one whose supremacy should be based on an idea: illogical, undeniable, discriminant: which instinct might accept and reason find no rational basis to reject or approve. This was the binding assumption of the Arab movement; it was this which gave it an effective, if imbecile unanimity.’

That was the ‘Call To Arms’ that roused Muslims to rally around a Muslim flag….not US foreign policy but an awakening of Muslim consciousness, the appeal to join together to unite and reassert themselves and empower themselves in order that they can force recognition and acceptance of their religious and cultural demands within the countries they find themselves living in.

We can see how that is turning out…

‘One lesson well understood in both Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany was that propaganda is most effective when it is backed by terror.’

 

Or as the IRA said:

 “Both Sinn Féin and the IRA play different but converging roles in the war of national liberation. The Irish Republican Army wages an armed campaign… Sinn Féin maintains the propaganda war and is the public and political voice of the movement”.