Comments on The Pensive Quill: Understanding Terrorism and Political Violence

Moloney's would be an accurate and well resear...

2009-08-28T20:18:21.108+01:00

Moloney's would be an accurate and well researched account. No one book explains the Provisional IRA but if you were to pick one to enhance understanding it would be that one.

Appropos of this most important column and the ins...

2009-08-27T17:11:30.852+01:00

Appropos of this most important column and the insights of the author, which I share in general and rarely find in print anywhere else these days, is anyone willing to help me in learning the facts of the armed resistance in the recent chapter of the "Troubles" in the North? I realize that there is a possibility of actual danger in some levels of comment. Can I start by asking for comment on the accuracy of Ed Moloney's "Secret History of the IRA", and/or any better reference to the real history of the era's militant activists?

I am somewhat contemptuous of most academics who l...

2009-08-08T12:07:13.386+01:00

I am somewhat contemptuous of most academics who look at why people join a freedom struggle, as I have no confidence they are any more independent minded than the rest of us, indeed many are in the pay of the governments we oppose.

There is no mystery why people join organization's like the French resistance, IRA or the Taliban, the Indian write Pankaj Mishra sums up the reason perfectly here,

MH
-----

I had seen enough of Afghanistan outside their (British army--MH) compound to know that their endeavours, though well-intentioned and vigorous, were rendered futile by the fact they had come, and were largely seen, as invaders in a country notoriously hostile to foreign armies.

More confirmation came on the afternoon I joined one of their frequent patrols to the city. As our armoured jeep left the British compound, the soldiers quickly lost their easy amiability; the outside world suddenly seemed full of unseen threats. They drove very fast, cutting through the slow-moving traffic with the help of some furious honking and co-pilots who forced all other vehicles out of their way.

You had to look back to notice the rage of the Afghan donkey cart drivers bullied off the tarmac and into the dusty verge where they struggled to rein in their distressed animals.

Later in Kabul, and then in eastern Afghanistan, where I saw the bigger and more heavily armed Nato and US convoys from the fearful perspective of a pedestrian, it was even clearer that a single patrol could lose hearts and minds arduously won over many months.

The daily humiliations of a prolonged military occupation, among which aggressive driving ranked well below the destruction of entire villages from the air, had become as intolerable as the oppressions of the Taliban to ordinary Afghans; and the western politicians who claimed to be making progress by sending out soldiers to distribute candy and footballs to Afghan children had themselves turned into political infants.

Interesting post, hard for a dead-brain like me to...

2009-08-08T03:13:48.376+01:00

Interesting post, hard for a dead-brain like me to read, but worth it. What you wrote-

"In the case of the IRA, leaders followed with ideas events that were already happening on the ground."

that rang true to me and coming from someone like you it was good to read.