How Do You Spell That?

If there was really a war on terror, we'd've have launched an invasion into Ireland as well.

If there was really a war for freedom of oppressed regimes, we'd've made it our personal mission to liberate Taiwan from China, and then start working on China.

Gerry Adams, though, has always been part of the POLITICAL wing of the IRA, Sinn Fein. Leaders meet with Adams for the same reason they met with Arafat - he's the politically acceptable face for a group of people who are either terrorists or freedom fighters depending on your personal politics. If you're not willing to sit down at a table with people, guess what, the problems never get resolved.

This isn't like fighting a war against a nation-state where you get the opposing side's elected (or unelected) leader in a room to talk to them. It's fighting a war against an insurgency, and if you want to open a dialogue to resolve the issues, it means talking to THEIR political leadership, and in this case, that means Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams.

I can understand not invading Ireland, seeing as how Britain has been containing the issue to a point (poorly, but to a cease-fire point). But yes, ignoring Northern Ireland has always been a thorn with me.

Taiwan? Oh hell, you will never get an argument from me on that issue. I honestly think the only reason we haven't done it is due to the immediate recession that would start as a result of an export ban from the PRC. Taiwan should have been recognized as an independent entity a very long time ago (think Carter/Nixon).

Gerry Adams has been named as a leader in the Paramilitary IRA, Sinn Fein was his cover to be able to visit Clinton, et al. I bitched about it a long time ago. But someome thinks we needed the irish vote for whatever reason and let Bush sit down with this huge F*cking terrorist.

The British had a peace offer on the table for more than a decade, the IRA wanted no part of it since it meant their disarmament. And since they horribly misjudged the public's reaction to their robbery in Belfast, that was the only catalyst behind why they finally, begrudingly disarmed. Otherwise, we'd probably still hear of IRA crap still being flung in London.

If I felt I was an opressed people -- as the IRA do (and, I should point out for completely fucking legitimate reasons) -- you can bet your sweet ass I wouldn't be willing to disarm either.

Disarmament usually (and historically) means "Oh good, now we can kick your ass and you can't fight back. Dumbass." Just ask the Jews. They'll tell you all about it.

You can almost hear Dark Helmet shouting "Fooooled yoooou!" at anyone who falls for that.

My point is that the "war on terror" isn't about terror, it's about keeping the populace in fear. The "war for freedom" isn't about freedom, it's about covering up the failure of the war on terror.

Americans have happily suffered through sacrifice in the name of true "wars for freedom", ask your grandparents who had rations of bread during WWII. In the name of real honest-to-goodness wars "to bring freedom to those who are oppressed", Americans are willing to to suffer a lot.

But here's where you were wrong, the majority of people in Northern Ireland wanted to stay with Great Britain, and not be part of the Catholic government in Ireland. Opressed is probably taking the term too far, especially when the opression only occured AFTER terrorist bombings began. Think Judean Peoples Front.

And disarmament? After Sinn Fein had negotiated agreement after agreement saying they would disarm, only to have the Army Council say "no" and the leaders of Sinn Fein go "well, we tried". Too bad those same Sinn Fein leaders were on the damn IRA Army Council.

And yes, I would love to see us fight for freedom, but if I recall a good percentage of the US populace doesn't want us to fight for freedom in other countries.

I don't think it's that "we don't want to fight for freedom," it's that if leadership outright lies to us (can you say "9/11 connections"? can you say "WMD"?) then we wonder if it's about "Freedom" at all.

Just because the Sinn Fein leaders are also on the IRA Army Council doesn't mean they *control* the IRA Army Council.

According to this, it does look like the council consisted of seven people, three of which were "senior/leading" Sinn Fein members. While it's not a majority, it's a "significant percentage". It's also humorous how these assholes kept saying "oh, we're for the peace process", yet still were participating in terrorism planning and execution.

And yeah, Iraq has been a clusterfark, just like any other war. But I still don't hear about how almost every single intelligence agency (including the Russians, the Germans, the French, the British, etc) all got the same intel and all got it wrong.

And yes, we can debate the war ad nauseum.... I don't see either of our positions changing too soon. ;-)

"And yeah, Iraq has been a clusterfark, just like any other war. But I still don't hear about how almost every single intelligence agency (including the Russians, the Germans, the French, the British, etc) all got the same intel and all got it wrong."

... just a point of fact... many many many other countries, including at least two countries you mention above, explicitly pointed out that they had doubts about the whole WMD thing.

So it's not like "they all got it wrong, too," they actually got it RIGHT. They said "hey, this doesn't smell right", and because of that, their gov'ts weren't quite so quick to jump into the fiasco.

But that's a different argument for a different blog post, and one we've had many times before. :-P