One’s man terrorist…
Prime Minister John Howard calls the IRA “terrorists” who “murdered people.” “The reason that the British security forces and police are so effective in responding to terrorist attacks”, he says, “is the bitter 30 years’ experience of dealing with the IRA. There was nothing heroic about the IRA campaign, although it is still shrouded in romanticism in the eyes of some.”
Let me get this straight. Howard is comfortable comparing the IRA struggle – brutal, criminal and uncompromising as it once was – to the recent London attacks, carried out by men with absolutely no comparative ideology, motives or ideals. It’s so politically convenient labelling every act of violence as a terrorist act, therefore negating any distinguishing reason or background. The London suicide bombers are completely irrelevant to the IRA campaign of the 1970s and 1980s. Once again, “we” are the unwitting victims of “them.”
Of course, Howard presented former “terrorist” Nelson Mandela with an Order of Australia in 1999.
