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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Very different situations. Northern Ireland was basically a low-level civil war. And the authorities and the IRA had channels of communication that enabled them to negotiate and sometimes dial down the violence. The IRA usually targeted British servicemen and politicians. They often phoned in warnings before bombs were set to go off - their goal wasn't to maximize civilian casualties, but to demonstrate their strength and capability.
Islamic terrorism is very different. It has no coherent political agenda. There are no channels or even reason for negotiation. Maximizing civilian casualities is the whole point. And let's not forget that the people carrying out the attacks want to die because they're sure they'll go to paradise as martyrs. If they could press a button and kill themselves and 10,000 random people, they would do so in an instant. You couldn't say the same for the IRA.
However, the comparison cuts both ways. We might ask if the UK should come down on Islamic terrorism as heavily as it did on the IRA. Bring in the army to patrols neighbourhoods where terrorists are known to live. Scoop up radicals and lock them in internment camps. Allow special forces in plain clothes to gun down radicals in the street.
Of course, those measures would be counterproductive (which is why they haven't been taken). But the notion that British media and politicians are over-reacting to Islamicist terrorism relative to Irish terrorism is unfounded. They've shown far more restraint than their counterparts 40 years ago.
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Your argument is valid points, the reasons, responses, methods and physical damage are different. What's not different is what the terror and body counts are. I'm pointing to the killing and terror as context that this isn't unprecedented. It's been going on since we started living together