IMMIGRATION thread

[Pannonian]

No instances of Irishmen born in England who may have helped in some way, shape or form, IRA in committing some crimes?

So you ignored the bit about the republicans having qualms about targeting civilians, and their always keeping contacts open and mostly keeping to their agreements. After the worst atrocity in the Troubles, the bombing at Omagh, RIRA refrained from further civilian targeting, and IIRC parts of them split away, while the rump PIRA assisted in making sure that no such things happened again as far as was in their control. That's terrorism with politics in mind, and when politics is involved, our society can deal with it.

Contrast with the 7/7 bombings, which killed even more than the Omagh incident. After the Omagh bombing, the various IRAs refrained from further attacks as killing civilians wasn't their primary aim, and indeed went against their primary aim, which was political. A few weeks after the 7/7 attacks, there were another series of attempted attacks in south London, thwarted only by the incompetence of the perpetrators. There wasn't any political aim to these attacks. The only aim was to kill as many civilians as possible. And after one incident of killing dozens of civilians, there wasn't a group responsible that was shocked by the death toll, that decided to stop further attacks as their political aim was undermined by the lethality of the attack. Instead, that first incident inspired another attack, without any political aim, but only with the aim of killing as many soft targets as possible.

There is a world of difference between terrorism with political aims, and terrorism that only tries to kill as many innocents as possible. The former requires that there is someone that we can deal with. We can cope with that. The latter doesn't have anyone that we can deal with, and the only thing we can do is suck it up. The Irish republicans were shocked by the death toll of Omagh, and no longer wanted anything to do with the attackers. The Islamists celebrated the death toll of the 7/7 bombings, and were inspired to attempt further attacks. While we may differ in politics, the Irish republicans are still recognisably of the same world as us. Islamists are completely alien to us.