Timothy McVeigh is rotting in his grave

[Larry_Mudd]

Aye, me too.

[grey_ideas]

@bluethree

3. Anne Applebaum has written a great column in the Washington Post about how for decades Americans gave financial support to terrorists in Ireland, and how accepted it was here at home. Terrorists who killed people. Yet somehow their names don’t get put on Do Not Fly lists.

That topic has always interested me, but I’ve never quite had the courage to start a discussion on it. Not wishing to hijack this topic but I’ve searched and can’t find any direct topic on it. Would you know if it has been discussed here?

grey_ideas

[Malacandra]

@Guinastasia

Why don’t you ask the grandson of Lord Mountbaden if he agrees with you.

:dubious:

Or even the great-nephew of Lord Mountbatten, who is probably a little better known. :dubious:

[Futile_Gesture]

@grey_ideas

Would you know if it has been discussed here?

Certainly has. A few Dopers were asking after 9/11 if the US President’s zeal for going after all who aided and harboured terrorists would extend to those Americans who funded Irish terrorism.

[grey_ideas]

@Futile Gesture

Certainly has. A few Dopers were asking after 9/11 if the US President’s zeal for going after all who aided and harboured terrorists would extend to those Americans who funded Irish terrorism.

Ahh, thank you. I must have missed those, I’ll have a dig around to find them. It’s interested me, in light of events over the last 4 years, whether there has been a reevaluation of past actions regarding terrorist funding from certain areas of the US.

Thanks Futile Gesture

grey_ideas

[holmes]

Why do think the IRA’s talking about giving up violence as weapon? It’s hard to rally up the jar in the local pub, when our boys and girls are dying to prevent the very thing your $10.00 is going towards.

[Domokun]

The IRA started down the road of disarmament LONG before 9/11.

[TwistofFate]

@holmes

Why do think the IRA’s talking about giving up violence as weapon? It’s hard to rally up the jar in the local pub, when our boys and girls are dying to prevent the very thing your $10.00 is going towards.

You’re an idiot.

[holmes]

I didn’t mention 9/11. I was really referring to the London bombing, which seems to me to be a real line in the sand, for the fence sitters. You can’t be screaming that Arab terrorists are evil and must be destroyed, when the IRA has done the same thing. You know, there’s no way around it; there’s no, “Well it’s different.” Some of the IRA’s greatest support comes from Americans, whether they want to admit that it went into bombings and terror or not.

Maybe it’s me, but went I was a kid, and even into my mid-teens there was jar on the bar or under it and that money went to fight the cause and would be surprised if there aren’t still a few jars around.

YMMV, of course.

[TwistofFate]

And once again, the IRA have been in a discomissioning process since before 2001.

[holmes]

Perhaps I’m not being clear. Once the US had been attacked by other terrorists groups, the IRA despite their statements to stop using violence prior to those attacks; realized that they DARE not use violence anymore, as they would lose any American support they had. Now perhaps they intented to stop using violence and would have stuck to it, however once 9/11 happened and now the London bombings, violence is no longer an opinion to them; even if they wanted to use it.

“This announcement has 9/11 written all over it, because that terrible day changed forever the way Americans, the Irish, the British, many people view freedom-fighter struggles,” says John Hulsman, a specialist in European affairs at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Before the shock of Sept. 11, 2001, the idea had currency that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, but that’s not true any more,” says Mr. Hulsman, who has focused on the Northern Ireland conflict. “If there’s any beneficial side effect to the rise of Muslim extremism it may be the realization that we live in a different time when violent extremism is not acceptable. The IRA and sinn fein [the Irish republican movement’s political wing] seem to be finally recognizing this.”

Hulsman says 9/11 also took its toll on the IRA because it accelerated a distaste for violence that had been growing among the guerrilla army’s crucial American supporters. American moral and financial support, centered in the Irish-Catholic community, was key to the movement’s survival.

“The terrorist attacks on the US changed Americans’ perspective and got things rolling, but the IRA’s continuing criminal activities have only dug their hole deeper,” Hulsman says. “They’ve totally estranged themselves from their American supporters, who had been bankrolling Sinn Fein for decades.”

The IRA pledges a farewell to arms

[Larry_Mudd]

@holmes' link

…says John Hulsman, a specialist in European affairs at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Say, he’s the same razor-sharp European analyst who recently observed that France and the Netherlands’ lack of support for the EU constititution signaled the turning of the tide in Europeans’ attitudes toward socialist economic policies, and that the public is crying out for American-style approaches with regard to taxation and social programs, isn’t he?

How cute!