Bombing, then and now
 

ISIS is bombing Europe (London, Madrid, Paris, Brussels). This reminds me of the bombing campaign of the IRA in England. I am not making it equivalent to the ISIS atrocities, with suicides and no warnings, but I wonder if the coping lessons learned then could have relevance now. London coped with IRA bombs. Can Europe do the same with ISIS?

There is a significant difference. It's incredibly difficult to deal with suicide bombers versus bombers who drop a briefcase or a package and make their escape. And all of the police forces as well as a huge number of civilians were on on the lookout at all times.

I was in London several times during the IRA bombings and the public was on guard everywhere - I recall being in the ladies room in Harrods and a woman who (idiotically) did not take her shopping bags into the stall with her came out to find that they had been scooped up by security and taken to a secure place to be examined. Similarly a guy who let go of his carry-on to go wherever came back to find it gone (presumably take to a bomb-safe room).

Also - I think you were dealing with a much smaller organization (who were committed to violence versus just change) and infiltrating small cells and tracking them was easier.

We are dealing at the moment with an enemy we can't identify, linked to the willingness to die themselves to take a lot of people with them and a massive increase in the number of people traveling on a regular basis.

IMHO we need a lot more people on the inside of ISIS and seem to have none.

I am thinking more of how people who had nothing to do with prevention or punishment dealt with knowing that another bomb could go off anywhere, and also knowing that any individual's risk of being a victim on any given day was extremely low.

There's one hugely important feature of the IRA's long, dishonourable (and continuing) tradition of mass murder which differentiates it from modern Islamism.

The IRA's late 20th century campaign on the British mainland started - with the connivance and financial support of much of the US Democrat Establishment, including the Kennedy family - in 1972. Most of its atrocities, and the vast majority of the deaths it caused, were outside London. The campaign was carried out almost entirely by people born in Ireland, with a tiny sprinkling of deranged support from British Protestants, and cash from standard-issue foreign agitators, like East Coast Plastic Paddies and Gadaffi.

<b> Not a single British-born Catholic was ever found to have lent support or succour to the killings. </b>

So the campaign didn't share the real problem the current wave of Islamist-inspired European terrorism poses for Europe: the fact that the killers were all born and live in the countries they're trying to terrorise, and appear to get substantial help from neighbours in Muslim ghettoes.

Virtually all those Muslim murderers and accomplices have been educated (in Britain, France and Belgium) in local, allegedly secular, schools. <b> Virtually all the British Catholics whose opposition to terrorism starved the IRA went to Catholic schools. </b> By happy chance, the Blitz, and post-WW2 slum clearance, had eliminated (in England and Wales) working-class Irish Catholic and Protestant ghettoes and postwar Socialism Lite had further integrated Britain's Catholic community into the national Establishment.

No democracy has yet succeeded in overcoming by force widespread alienation in ghettoes. Most modern state education fails to counter minority cultures' belief that violence is justified if a group thinks they're victims: Britain's culture of separate, value-centred, Catholic education meant the support the IRA expected to find locally simply didn't exist.

Overcoming the IRA campaign needed skilled diplomacy to fight American pseudo-liberals' love of killing foreigners for pointless causes, high quality intelligence and a native population with a stiff upper lip. That took time - but they're technical skills any rich democracy will easily acquire. The fact that the entire local support the IRA needed rejected them was the result of a series of historical accidents, unlikely to be repeated elsewhere.

Islamism's support isn't entirely about ghettoes: the 2005 London bombers were mostly well educated - though state-educated - people from comfortable, integrated communities. But the problem of neighbour support - especially in Brussels and around Paris - may be simply insoluble.

Well said flanner.

Note that suicide for a Catholic is a mortal sin,

jihad (which covers a wide range of actions the vast majority non violent) for a Muslim (confused by false views of their religion or not) is a duty.

Oddly, many Muslim scholars also believe that suicide is an unforgivable sin - and during WW2, British Catholic chaplains in some cases encouraged spies parachuted into France to carry suicide pills. Set a socially integrated Jesuit a problem in the right way, and he'll always come up with the right solution.

The difference, of course, is that Catholicism is centrist and Islam isn't. Over the past 200 years, Britain and the Vatican have developed a cohabitation which has frequently ensured the message from St Peter's is compatible with Britain's interests. Throughout the Irish Troubles, disagreements between the two were kept to areas (like the practicalities of Catholic representation in Northern Ireland) where Britain can live with other views. The Vatican consistently (though many of us may say not often or loudly enough) avoided any encouraging of existential threats to British law and order.

There is no equivalent Islamic body any European country can quietly do business with behind the scenes.

"Set a socially integrated Jesuit a problem in the right way, and he'll always come up with the right solution. " so true

I seem to remember a "nuisance" IRA bombing campaign in the mid-1950's, nuisance in the sense that bombs were black powder or emptied fireworks and were smoky and noisy but not filled with nails or other diabolical devices.

In this connection, I think I remember specifically a bomb in Oxford, perhaps the bust station, in 1955.

Are the backfiles of the Oxford Mail available to check this out?

In the serious IRA campaign of the late '70's and early '80's, I remember great emphasis on "see it, report it" and our bags were searched at the major tourist sites, including attending worship services at Westminster Abbey.

I wouldn't want to overplay the stoicism of the British, but sudden death at the hands of an enemy or a terrorist has been a feature of most of the years since 1914.

There were Zeppelin raids on London in the First World War, followed by the blitz in the Second. Terrorism appeared from time to time - Irish (once known as Fenians), Anarchists, and more recently Islamists. The common feature is that the individual can never know when such incidents are going to happen, the attack is seldom personal, and there are few realistic anti-measures. The only things that work are vigilence and taking cover at the time.

The common response is "Don't let the bastards win".

During the so-called "years of lead" in Italy, terrorists gave no warnings about impending bombings. They just killed people.

Italy survived without resorting to shredding civil rights and civil liberties, or destroying liberal democracy. Italy has had significant troubles with policing and anti-democratic activity -- although the worst anti-democratic activity in Italy in the post-Mussolini era was Germany engineering the removal of the democratcally elected Berlusconi and replacing him with an unelected technocrat more inclined to push through German-friendly economic policies.

Contrary to the popular belief expressed on Fodor's, terrorist activity drops significantly when the political grievances that fuel terrorism are addressed. This was true in the histories of both Ireland, Spain and -- how quickly they forget (or were never taught?) -- the United States.

What are ISIL's political grievances?

fundamentally to live as they want to according to their own laws and rule and to ensure that the rest of the planet live under the same laws as ISIL do.

That those laws would be considered extreme by most sensible people is a different issue. More to the point they wish to impose their vision of the law on others, this would be called conquest.

That the regions where ISIL have strength are inhabited by some people who have not agreed to or been allowed to assist develop those laws (ie land already taken under force of arms) also needs resolving.

Thinking that bigger walls solves this and merely gives the delusion of safety while not resolving the issue. The planet is a round ball not a flat board game.

It might be worth reading Mark Thomas's "Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier". For Fun. for example or https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/boo...AhN/story.html to get a flavour of how successful this wall-building activity actually is

Certainly the sight of the French Foreign Minister walking in suit and boots through the camps in Calais begging the 4000 or so to apply for asylum in France (rejected) was an interesting thing earlier in the week

"fundamentally to live as they want to according to their own laws and rule and to ensure that the rest of the planet live under the same laws as ISIL do."


ISIL doesn't think in terms of 'laws,' and they don't want us to live like them, just under their control. They are a gangster network, financing their atrocities with criminal activities. Extortion and 'protection' rackets, a black market in stolen artifacts and relics, drug sales, smuggling stolen oil, kidnappings for ransom... They are actively recruiting violent criminals and street thugs, even those who don't share their extremist religious ideologies or objectives.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...dca_story.html

From the article:

“For them, joining [the Islamic State] is merely a shift to another form of deviant behavior,” said a report released this month by Rik Coolsaet, a professor in Belgium who has studied the foreign fighter flow. Membership in the Islamic State is for many Muslim youths part of a progression that began with “gangs, rioting, drug trafficking and juvenile delinquency,” Coolsaet wrote.

When did IS bomb London & Madrid?

Jean you may or may not be right, I suspect that neither of us really know, however they claim to be following sharia law, clearly some rules may be more enforced than others. Still I suspect that like many things the scum comes to the surface.

Daesh is a better word as it basically means "bigots who impose their views on others"

<how people who had nothing to do with prevention or punishment dealt with knowing that another bomb could go off anywhere>

Most people have no other option but to carry on with their normal daily routines, so they do.

Jean may indeed be right, but IMO one never gets anywhere via wholesale condemnation of one's enemy. The IRA was composed of gangsters and thugs, AND it originated in a legitimate grievance. Both can be true.

There is a huge amount of intelligent, accurate analysis available on line from multiple sources about the grievances of ISIS/ISIL/IS. Try the New York Review of Books, Juan Cole's blog, or even the BBC, actually. Or a New York Times editorial. Anybody who actually wants to know can find out.

Beyond cocktail party chat:

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/11...trategy-chaos/

"Beyond cocktail party chat:"

Actually its not.

It's NBC 24 hour news chat.

Why would anyone bother about a small number of terrorist acts in comparison to the 13,000 Americans killed mainly by their own nationals, on their own soil in 2015.