Grannygrinder":2sylo37i said:
I'm not going to trawl through 19 pages to see if this point has been raised so if it has sorry.
If violence of this stature had occured in Ireland now or in the past there would have been a huge military presence and yet i've not heard any polititian mention that as an option.
Have the government military cuts been so harsh that we don't have enough soldiers to defend our own streets?
Sad times
NORTHERN Ireland has a disctinctly different set of circumstances.
1) The Irish state (Eire) has nothing to do with the UK, so NI effectivley is a 'colony'. Imagine if Calais and Dunkerque were British, and French paramilitary organisations were operating in the British zone to secure its sucesion from the UK. The troops would be appropriate.
2) There is no organized 'enemy'. The rules of engagment and the beaviour of troops is different to the police, half the problem in Iraq and Afgan is the fact that we are 'policing' those countris woth troops.
Troops need rules of engament, when can you open fire wil live ammo (troops must have live ammo of there is a threat to their well being)?
When a kid throws a brick? When John Lewis' window gets broken? In the Falklands war (an easily black and white conflict against another sovereign state that had invaded out territory, ie. RoE simplicty itself) it was hard enough to sort out without the crap of 'do not fire until fired upon'.
3) NI has had a active garrison for a long period, and has never been truly peaceful. London is not the same.
turning out 2000 armed soldiers against civillians is hugely bad for the stability of the country, bas for society and horrendous for the morale and mental well being of the soldiers involved. Every country that uses troops to ploice it citizens has found it causes more harm than good, look at the US example of military policing the student sit ins during the 1960's.
If I were a soldier I rather be faced with an armed enemy in a real conflict than with a 15 year old girl with a brick. One you can shoot dead and say 'him or me, rules of the game' the other will haunt you for decades, either you did nothing or did too much.
Northern Ireland was not ultimately solved by the hard work of the British Army, many soldiers there witnessed or did things that they have had to come to terms with.
The Army is there to defend the state, in London, Birmingham & Manchester the state was not in danger.