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I hate to keep making a point of this, but it has happened in the past and the solution wasn't pretty. Wikipedia says: The Troubles' impact on the ordinary peo

by jamii 16y ago

I hate to keep making a point of this, but it has happened in the past and the solution wasn't pretty. Wikipedia says: The Troubles' impact on the ordinary people of Northern Ireland produced such psychological trauma that the city of Belfast had been compared to London during the Blitz. [104] The stress resulting from bomb attacks, street disturbances, security checkpoints, and the constant military presence had the strongest effect on children and young adults. [105] In addition to the violence and intimidation, there was chronic unemployment and a severe housing shortage. Vandalism was also a major problem. In the 1970s there were 10,000 vandalised empty houses in Belfast alone. Most of the vandals were aged between eight and thirteen. [106] Activities for young people were limited, with pubs fortified and cinemas closed. Just to go shopping in the city centre required passing through security gates and being subjected to body searches. In addition, some statistics from the same page: Injuries 47,541 Shootings 36,923 Armed robberies 22,539 People charged with paramilitary offences 19,605 Bombings and attempted bombings 16,209 Arson 2,225 [citation needed] I'm constantly amazed that after surviving the Troubles we over-react so massively to a couple of nutjobs lighting their crotches. Al Qaeda are incompetent morons. PIRA were fucking scary.

mootothemax 16y ago
Al Qaeda are incompetent morons. PIRA were fucking scary. I kinda-sorta agree: suicide bombing's a pretty stupid way to go about things, as it means you wipe out all your capable terrorists after only one go. The IRA didn't have that problem - well, intentionally at least.
- jamii 16y ago
  Al Qaeda also seem to keep throwing themselves after hard targets. PIRA (and the UVF, UDA etc) left bombs on trains, dropped them in shopping centre bins, posted them through letter-boxes. The really terrifying thing was that nowhere was safe. One of my earliest memories is helping to check under the car for bombs before driving to school.
tomjen3 16y ago
Thats the part I never got either - I remember after 11/9 that I had wished America was British, because you guys reacted so sensible and wouldn't have gone so crazy. A country that can survive the Blitz isn't going to care about a couple of buildings.
- jamii 16y ago
  Britain didn't react any more sensibly though. We had arguably even more erosion of civil liberties as a result eg http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8092328/Terrorism-Act-No-terror-arrests-made-after-100000-stop-and-searches.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8...
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Yaeh - but to a 7th grader that wasn't apparent 2 days later. I still hope that with enough tea and scones one can get some sensibility back into that country.
    - jamii 16y ago
      Stupid lawmaking aside, I was really proud the day after the London bombings to see so many people commuting to work regardless. There were a fair few white faces and it was deathly silent but the place was still packed. You can blow up our trains and murder our citizens but life goes on.
      - tomjen3 16y ago
        Thats great to hear - I really hate the politicians for what they have done to the UK.
        jamii 16y ago
        I feel like they acted the way they did because they thought the public wanted to see some kind of action in response to the threat. It's as much the fault of the British public for being so ambivalent about politics that the government is left trying to guess what we want. Perhaps if more people were to study modern history it would be a bigger issue. Outside of my immediate friendship group, most of the people I've talked about it don't seem to view it as an issue. If you don't explicitly value civil liberty then it seems like a fair exchange for the chance to catch a terrorist before they act. Not many people think it through further than that.
ultrasaurus 16y ago
"a severe housing shortage... there were 10,000... empty houses in Belfast alone." A potent reminder of the kind of glaringly painful inefficiencies that come out of this kind of thing.
- jamii 16y ago
  Not inefficiency as such. Many houses were empty because the occupants were forcefully evicted. "Another feature of the political violence was the involuntary or forced displacement of both Catholics and Protestants from formerly mixed residential areas. For example, in Belfast, Protestants were forced out of Lenadoon, and Catholics were driven out of the Rathcoole estate and the Westvale neighbourhood. In Derry city, almost all the Protestants fled to the predominantly loyalist Fountain Estate and Waterside areas."
roc 16y ago
The IRA was a completely different case. They weren't asking agents to directly murder random individuals or property. They had the tacit support of (or were at least politely ignored by) much of the surrounding populace and social institutions. They didn't stick out in a crowd. They were born and raised there, had history, jobs, families. Al Qaeda enjoys none of those advantages for planning attacks in the US. Until and unless they can successfully recruit within the US and garner support within the US, an IRA-style campaign is implausible. That Al Qaeda has to rely on people who consistently can't light a fuse under stress, or keep a bomb-factory under wraps highlights how much harder it is to find people to perform wanton murder, even as compared to finding people willing to destroy property or carry out targeted murders.
- jamii 16y ago
  Besides the fact that most of the Al Qaeda members involved in the London bombings were British citizens, if you stand out then the IRA style attacks are easier to perform. You don't have to get through airport security or pass a background check. You just go shopping. Thousands of immigrants do it without being stopped by the police. > They weren't asking agents to directly murder random individuals or property. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles "In 1972, the Provisional IRA killed approximately 100 soldiers, wounded 500 more and carried out approximately 1,300 bombings,[66] mostly against commercial targets which they considered "the artificial economy".[67][68] The bombing campaign killed many civilians, notably on Bloody Friday on 21 July, when 22 bombs were set off in the centre of Belfast killing seven civilians and two soldiers. " But otherwise I agree. The level of competence of Al Qaeda recruits is laughable in comparison to PIRA. Which is exactly my point - we've survived far worse, why are we giving up so much of what we stand for for protection from such incompetent terrorists?
  - roc 16y ago
    Having citizenship doesn't confer the same benefits of having roots like the IRA did. It makes you less suspicious than someone without citizenship, sure. But it's still not sufficient for an IRA-style campaign. e.g. Attacking a shopping mall or hotel isn't difficult and all but impossible to prevent, I absolutely agree. The difference is, the al qaeda agent won't find refuge a few blocks away. He won't melt into any crowd. He won't have trusted people from the community who will keep quiet or lie to the authorities for him. He won't have a weapon supplier who continues to supply him. And the resource that he does have are far more likely to melt away as it becomes clear that he is out to indiscriminately murder. Ergo the ability of any foreign agent to make subsequent strikes is drastically reduced. And, unless I'm mistaken, the IRA never set out to murder non-uniformed, uninvolved civilians. Those that were killed, such as on Bloody Friday, were considered among the IRA wholly undesirable collateral damage. While it takes a certain kind of person to be convinced to drop off a bomb designed to strike a military target, or property target of a collaborator, that might kill innocent people, it's far, far more difficult to find people who will execute an attack designed to kill people going about their day. And I absolutely agree that our response is laughable. But that's how it goes. Authority has no vested interest in proportional or rational response. Its rewards are aligned with over-reaction. If its masters (ostensibly the voters) don't choose to curtail that response or correct the reward structure, we'll only see continued escalation.

by jamii 16y ago

mootothemax 16y ago

Al Qaeda are incompetent morons. PIRA were fucking scary. I kinda-sorta agree: suicide bombing's a pretty stupid way to go about things, as it means you wipe out all your capable terrorists after only one go. The IRA didn't have that problem - well, intentionally at least.

jamii 16y ago
Al Qaeda also seem to keep throwing themselves after hard targets. PIRA (and the UVF, UDA etc) left bombs on trains, dropped them in shopping centre bins, posted them through letter-boxes. The really terrifying thing was that nowhere was safe. One of my earliest memories is helping to check under the car for bombs before driving to school.

tomjen3 16y ago

Thats the part I never got either - I remember after 11/9 that I had wished America was British, because you guys reacted so sensible and wouldn't have gone so crazy. A country that can survive the Blitz isn't going to care about a couple of buildings.

jamii 16y ago
Britain didn't react any more sensibly though. We had arguably even more erosion of civil liberties as a result eg http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8092328/Terrorism-Act-No-terror-arrests-made-after-100000-stop-and-searches.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8...
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Yaeh - but to a 7th grader that wasn't apparent 2 days later. I still hope that with enough tea and scones one can get some sensibility back into that country.
  - jamii 16y ago
    Stupid lawmaking aside, I was really proud the day after the London bombings to see so many people commuting to work regardless. There were a fair few white faces and it was deathly silent but the place was still packed. You can blow up our trains and murder our citizens but life goes on.
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      Thats great to hear - I really hate the politicians for what they have done to the UK.
      - jamii 16y ago
        I feel like they acted the way they did because they thought the public wanted to see some kind of action in response to the threat. It's as much the fault of the British public for being so ambivalent about politics that the government is left trying to guess what we want. Perhaps if more people were to study modern history it would be a bigger issue. Outside of my immediate friendship group, most of the people I've talked about it don't seem to view it as an issue. If you don't explicitly value civil liberty then it seems like a fair exchange for the chance to catch a terrorist before they act. Not many people think it through further than that.

ultrasaurus 16y ago

"a severe housing shortage... there were 10,000... empty houses in Belfast alone." A potent reminder of the kind of glaringly painful inefficiencies that come out of this kind of thing.

jamii 16y ago
Not inefficiency as such. Many houses were empty because the occupants were forcefully evicted. "Another feature of the political violence was the involuntary or forced displacement of both Catholics and Protestants from formerly mixed residential areas. For example, in Belfast, Protestants were forced out of Lenadoon, and Catholics were driven out of the Rathcoole estate and the Westvale neighbourhood. In Derry city, almost all the Protestants fled to the predominantly loyalist Fountain Estate and Waterside areas."

roc 16y ago

The IRA was a completely different case. They weren't asking agents to directly murder random individuals or property. They had the tacit support of (or were at least politely ignored by) much of the surrounding populace and social institutions. They didn't stick out in a crowd. They were born and raised there, had history, jobs, families. Al Qaeda enjoys none of those advantages for planning attacks in the US. Until and unless they can successfully recruit within the US and garner support within the US, an IRA-style campaign is implausible. That Al Qaeda has to rely on people who consistently can't light a fuse under stress, or keep a bomb-factory under wraps highlights how much harder it is to find people to perform wanton murder, even as compared to finding people willing to destroy property or carry out targeted murders.

jamii 16y ago
Besides the fact that most of the Al Qaeda members involved in the London bombings were British citizens, if you stand out then the IRA style attacks are easier to perform. You don't have to get through airport security or pass a background check. You just go shopping. Thousands of immigrants do it without being stopped by the police. > They weren't asking agents to directly murder random individuals or property. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles "In 1972, the Provisional IRA killed approximately 100 soldiers, wounded 500 more and carried out approximately 1,300 bombings,[66] mostly against commercial targets which they considered "the artificial economy".[67][68] The bombing campaign killed many civilians, notably on Bloody Friday on 21 July, when 22 bombs were set off in the centre of Belfast killing seven civilians and two soldiers. " But otherwise I agree. The level of competence of Al Qaeda recruits is laughable in comparison to PIRA. Which is exactly my point - we've survived far worse, why are we giving up so much of what we stand for for protection from such incompetent terrorists?
- roc 16y ago
  Having citizenship doesn't confer the same benefits of having roots like the IRA did. It makes you less suspicious than someone without citizenship, sure. But it's still not sufficient for an IRA-style campaign. e.g. Attacking a shopping mall or hotel isn't difficult and all but impossible to prevent, I absolutely agree. The difference is, the al qaeda agent won't find refuge a few blocks away. He won't melt into any crowd. He won't have trusted people from the community who will keep quiet or lie to the authorities for him. He won't have a weapon supplier who continues to supply him. And the resource that he does have are far more likely to melt away as it becomes clear that he is out to indiscriminately murder. Ergo the ability of any foreign agent to make subsequent strikes is drastically reduced. And, unless I'm mistaken, the IRA never set out to murder non-uniformed, uninvolved civilians. Those that were killed, such as on Bloody Friday, were considered among the IRA wholly undesirable collateral damage. While it takes a certain kind of person to be convinced to drop off a bomb designed to strike a military target, or property target of a collaborator, that might kill innocent people, it's far, far more difficult to find people who will execute an attack designed to kill people going about their day. And I absolutely agree that our response is laughable. But that's how it goes. Authority has no vested interest in proportional or rational response. Its rewards are aligned with over-reaction. If its masters (ostensibly the voters) don't choose to curtail that response or correct the reward structure, we'll only see continued escalation.