Quote Originally Posted by gaelic cowboy View Post
It may seem that way in retrospect now but make no mistake the island was on a knife edge, the Republic was at a crossroads and could have been toppled so easily.

In the same year that we had these events in Derry rioters burned the British embassy to the ground in Dublin two days later.

William Craig launched the Ulster Vanguard Movement "We are prepared to come out and shoot and kill. I am prepared to come out and shoot and kill, let's put the bluff aside. I am prepared to kill, and those behind me will have my full support."

Bloody Friday 22 IRA bombs planted nine people killed and a further 130 civilians injured.

During all this we voted on accession to the EEC while various Anti EEC movements in the Extreme-Left marched in Dublin.

Incidentally the very papers to formalise our accession to the EEC were signed by Éamon de Valera himself as President of the Republic.


Pure luck is why we are nothing but pure luck.
It may have been pure luck at the time, but it's not pure luck now, and a retrospective view is exactly what we have, so let's take advantage of it. We know exactly what the factors were that led to the current peace, so giving them up in favour of the abstract pursuit of justice is foolish. It's easy to argue in sympathy for the victims, but that doesn't excuse creating more victims in the future.

To correlate the arguments more precisely, the prosecution of the soldiers means a loss of face on one or more sides, not solely the British government's. Which can lead to the perception that institutional fairness isn't present after all, and action unilaterally taken to restore the balance. Which can lead to the loss of prosperity due to instability. And at the end of it, people asking, was it really worth it, when we could have foreseen all this?