[Redbob]

"They dont want to be classified in that group with hamas, al qaeda, etc etc.

Does this mean they're also going to stop sending recruits to al Qaeda- and Palestian-sponsored terrorist training camps?

I guess it takes a bunch of unwashed camel-jockeys to finally give terrorism a bad name.

[livius]

I guess it takes a bunch of unwashed camel-jockeys to finally give terrorism a bad name.

That was my thought, too. The IRA has provided said camel-jockeys with lots of training, too; the IRA's best bombmaker was arrested in Brazil a couple of years ago, where he had gone to train FARC and Islamic militants.

Still, it would be nice if the IRA would just quit this stuff right now - at least that would be one less to worry about.

[NatsFan]

There's a fundamental difference between the IRA and Al Qaeda.

The IRA is a secular nationalist organization with pragmatic aims, doing what it believes to be looking after the Irish Catholic population in Northern Ireland. It's possible to compromise with them, and beneficial to do so for the sake of peace.

Al Qaeda is a religious fundamentalist movement which believes it is doing the will of God. It insists upon instituting Sharia governments all over the entire world, and are willing to kill as many innocents as it takes to achieve it. You can't compromise with such a group that believes it has a moral obligation to kill, you can only fight them to the death. You can compromise with secularists who have pragmatic aims.

It's easy to bash the IRA as a terrorist organization, as it is one, and it has killed innocents. But so has the other party in this conflict, the British government(previously English since it does go back that far). The British government has also been responsible for the deaths of many innocent civilians, and just because the innocent people they killed were done by an official government doesn't make it any better then the killings by the IRA.

Everybody in this conflict has blood on their hands, nobody is morally pure. But if the region is going to move forward and not have NI be perpetually in civil war, everybody has to be willing to put the past behind them and work towards peace.