Pedantic I know, but you don't find many "little girls who pray in Latin" in Catholic School anywhere these days.

Seeing the British presence in Northern Ireland as a key element in what's gone wrong over the years doesn't mean that a times there haven't been good intentions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

There's been a role for peacekeepers in Northern Ireland of one sort or another. But to use the British Army in that role in a longterm way was to put the soldiers in an impossible situation. They had about as much chance of being seen and treated as "peacekeepers" as the Israeli Defence Forces have in Gaza and the West Bank.