Jul 31, 2007

British Army Stands down in Northern Ireland

MSNBC story

And from the Northern Ireland point of view:

Slugger O'Toole

And here is a fine article "About Turn" by Mick Fealty on the Guardian's collective group blog, Comment is Free

The comment sections at both Slugger and comment is free are both illuminating as well- the strife may never be completely gone, but at least the discourse is becoming a bit more civil.

One comment served to remind me just how ridiculous our "occupation" of Iraq is:

Seriously though, the scale of British Army involvement in the Troubles was enormous, to match the level of garrisoning on a per capita basis that NI had at the peak of the Troubles Iraq would need to have five hundred thousand “coalition” forces and Afghanistan would need about fifty thousand more troops again. It shows just how much effort was required to keep the paddies down and correspondingly how little chance the current adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have of succeeding.
Posted by Shay Begorrah

2 comments:

old hack said...

Ya know, I hate to support "terrorism" but to see the old country finally oust the occupiers and get back to some sense of self governance I can't help but feel is a major achievement.

I know it was mostly drug lords and the lowest poorest people waging this fight but in any war there is always a grey.

The history channel in april did a piece on Sherman and did nothing but pertray him as a hero when what he really did was perform genocide and war crimes on his own people for the sake of "preserving the union"

old hack said...

I read that msnbc piece and it said "british troops and "policed" NI for 38 years. The Longest conflict Britain has ever been in"

HAAAAAhahaha!

are you kidding me?

Ireland and the UK have been at war for over 2000 frickin years. 38 years doesn't even touch the surface of how long Ireland has fought for independence.