since the united states is starting a global elimination of terrorism, we are gonna start with afganistan and the taliban. are we gonna go next to the irish republican army? to my knowledge they are also a large terrorist group. they are known to assassinate people and the parliment and blow up buildings also. if you go to belfast, ireland, it has many blown up buldings (by the IRA). now there is another terrorist group in a spanish speaking country. i do not remember the name though, i think they were the basques or something. im sure there are others that nobody knows about. now i did read this about the IRA from the ERRI counter terrorism archive: "Real IRA" Finally To Be Branded "Terrorists" By United States The US State Department is expected to finally announce on Wednesday that it is officially designating the Irish republican group the "Real IRA" as a foreign terrorist organization. It will mean that the group, which has been blamed for a series of bomb attacks in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain, will have any assets it has in the United States frozen. The sanctions against the group would mean the following: (1) A freeze on assets in the US. (2) Real IRA members would be denied US visas. (3) Ban on Americans giving the group money or support obviously the IRA has not attacked the US so they are not gonna be as harsh as they are with other islamic extremist groups (assuming they were responsible with the WTC attacks). but the 3 things listed are nothing drastic. US visas are not given to any type of criminals outside the USA (is that right, not sure about that). secondly, the US not giving money or support to a terrorist group is a given. also they have no economic interest in giving support to other terrorist groups. i dont think the US's sanctions are harsh enough on the IRA. they only reason they are not being harsh on the IRA is because they didnt attack the US, which probably wont prevent the IRA from doing more terrorism. im sure thats not gonna prevent global terrorism, its more like ending islamic extremist terrorism.
I think that is a legitimate question. The government has painted this "we will defeat terrorism" with a very broad stroke and I wonder how much of that they will actually back up and how much will be left alone for political reasons. Will they target groups in Ruwanda, the Sudan, Western Africa, Central America and, for that matter, here in the US. They've been tough on militia only when it really seemed necessary. Are they now going to go in and break up all the hate groups in a America as well as part of the "War on Terrorism"??? It will be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out because, thus far, it is a war on "Arab Terrorism."
No, we won't go after the IRA. I can tell you that there are those in the United Kingdom who are none too happy with the American sympathizers who send the IRA money.
The stuff we are doing now could be as important to our foreign policy as Jimmy Carter's human rights influence. Who knows how long and how far it could go, but the other has been going for more than 20 years now.
I honestly liken the entire situation to the war on drugs. This isn't something that will end anytime soon. It may outlast us! Does that mean we'll be fighting a real war with guns and tanks and soldiers 5, 10, 20 years from now dealing with the same stuff? Probably not. We'll likely hit back pretty hard if for no other reason than to show we can, then we'll do all the dirty work Americans really won't want to know about like tapping phones and infiltrating terrorist groups.
Are they going to target the Unionists too? BTW Jeff, where is Ruwanda? Is it anywhere close to Rwanda? LOL (j/k )
Maybe the government does not want to seem like they are going after all terrorist at the present moment. Wouldnt it be much easier to take care of Taliban and Al Queda (sp?) first and then concentrate on other groups. If US started out declaring war on IRA, Al Queda, Hamas, the Chechnayans, terrorist in Kashmir, Africa etc at the same time it would seem like a difficult job. What if a couple of these terrorist groups combined forces against the US. It would make it that much harder for US to get anything done. I think and I sincerely hope that Mr. Bush is serious about wiping out all terrorism. Just take care of Middle East first and then concentrate on everyone else.
The difference is there's an infinite supply of drugs, but not an infinite amount of people willing to die for their "cause", or many people who are willing to finance them.
