The publication of the Saville Report into an atrocity carried out by the British Army in Northern Ireland in 1972 has tempted Andrew Sullivan to write a post of remarkable stupidity.
This panicked murder of unarmed civilians was the Brits’ Gaza moment (along with their Cheney moment in instigating the torture of terror suspects in prison).
As anyone who has had a moment to glance at the report or knows anything about the recent history of Ireland is already aware, the soldiers of 1 Para were anything but panicked. They were pumped up and raring to go, the people who panicked were the demonstrators when the Paras opened up on them with their 7.62mm rifles.
The entire history of the last forty years suggests something else as well: that Irish terrorism was not defeated by force of arms, or brutality, or collective punishment. It took negotiations with the worst parties, a stoic acceptance of some terrorist violence because the attempt to stamp it all out only made it worse, economic growth, and insistence on the most logical partition.
Sullivan seems to think that the IRA entered negotiations from a position of strength. It did not. It only became seriously interested in negotiations when its capacity for violence had been greatly reduced by a 20 year counterinsurgency campaign that included mass internment without trial, juryless courts, interrogation techniques amounting to torture and the deniable targeted assassination of activists.
After thirty years trying to destroy Northern Ireland the IRA essentially settled for a role in administering it and the release of its prisoners on license. The British state is still in full control of the main levers of power and that’s not likely to change anytime soon, or ever. The Provos essentially entered into negotiations to see what sort of terms for giving up their struggle were on offer and not in any attempt to achieve those aims by peaceful means.
If the Israel-Palestine conflict was to be settled in a similar way to the agreement that ended the conflict in Northern Ireland then Gaza and the West Bank would become autonomous parts of Greater Israel and Hamas and Fatah would send MKs to the Knesset.
And can anybody guess what he’s on about when he talks of “and insistence on the most logical partition.”??? The border between Northern Ireland and what was first the Irish Free State and is now the Republic of Ireland hasn’t moved a millimeter since 1922.
How easy it is to poke holes in Sullivan’s historical theories when you know the history and the facts. But who among his readers would have that kind of cognition?
Eamonn,
Comparisons between the North and and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are always flawed. The situations are just too different.
The Provos essentially entered into negotiations to see what sort of terms for giving up their struggle were on offer and not in any attempt to achieve those aims by peaceful means.
Absolutely.
I never ran across the writings of Andrew Sullivan until recently, and I feel fortunate not to have wasted any time reading his guff.
He clearly doesn’t know much about the Six counties or the state of things in the 1970s.
Still silence from the murdering scum IRA for all the lives they took. The Paras responded to an attack and this cover up report by a leftist leaning big wig does nothing to alter the fact that the IRA murdered more people than anyone in NI. Unfortunately they still live and the boys who stood for freedom are no being pilloried by the same people they went to protect, by the same people who helped murder innocent civilians not only in NI but in England. Go the Paras, just a pity you missed McGuinness on the day
It is obvious that Sullivan saw the Saville Report as an opportunity to score analogous points against Israel, one of his periodic obsessions. Judeosphere has a post up about Sullivan’s stupid piece in the Australian “breaking up,” as Judeo humorously puts it, with Israel: http://www.thejudeosphere.com/?p=1336
Part of what I said there:
A major reason he is as big a blogger as he has become is that he was the most well-known journalist to turn so early to full-time blogging. And one consequence of the enormous readership he has experienced because of it has been the cumulative exposure of his idiosyncrasies and unsound and peculiar critical faculties. He will be remembered, in part, for a renown that was increased by blogging and reputation that was diminished by it.