Dear Bev.
I have been there, I do not sit on a bar stool in Boston, nor do I deny the horrors of war. I have lost many close friends in the conflict and prayed that others horribly wounded would live. I agonised over the descriptions family members provided of the sesicrated courpses of family members of close friends - Patsy O Hara, for example, burned by cigarette butts, the bones of his face broken by being stomped by British Soldiers, post humously, - but as I have not responded to others with personal invective, I have also tried to deel with facts more devoid of the pain we have all felt who have been involved int that terrible conflict, which no one I know who has been forced into its horror and pain, either conciders glorious or anything but the only way to respond to a situation that Republicans did not choose to make. I remind you, England came to us with guns and suspention of due process of law to re-enforce bigotry and discrimination.
I can address many of the individual points, and at the risk of some at Mudcat accusing us of politisizing the environment, I will. As in South Africa, these wounds can only heal after reconciliaiton, and that takes shedding light on the truth. I do so, in hopes that we can embrace as a community of Peoples Musicians, understand our different perspectives so our songs dont divide us any more than Yankee Doodle divided the US and Britain.
Bombs. I had a criminal Law prfessor who once said, it is always depraved heart killing when you use a bomb. I agree with him. I am in favor of humanity endeding the institution of war as barbaric and waistful. However, once a war begins, one side cannot claime the other must lay down and wait for destruction, and the weapons one uses are often determined by the reaction to the tactics of the other. The IRA, representatives of a small nation fighting a huge one, used weapons which caused a lot of damage, as Britain and the US did, in BOMBING North africa, a few years ago. The IRA developed a radio controled bomb to attempt to reduced civilian deaths. The British began to broadcast up and down the radio frequencies to prematurely explode IRA bombs, there by forceing the IRA to return to timered explosives. This increased the danger that military targets would not be the victems of the attack and there was a rise in civilian deaths, It was a horrible by product of the stupidity of war, but I wont accept that we bend to heartless will of a large uncaring power which as part of its cold war plans, wishes to continue unemployement, and ruination of lives of one portion of the population, killing them when they non-violently protest those conditions, remember Burntollet and Bloody Sunday, Republicans did not start the violence. Republicans also had an offer of a sease fire from the start.
Bev, I have to make breakfast for the wife, so I must run, but, we have to try and look beyond the pain we caused each other in order to live together in the future. I dont live in some dusty library far removed from the issues. I went into law, because I had seen so much harm being done on the streets in social conflict, and that was a better way of dealing with the issues than war. Maybe one day we need a Mudcat silent convention, of sitting and thinking together about each others pain, before we go to the next step of really listening to each others story of how we came to think as we do. One side or the other does not hold a monopoly on truth or pain.
Peace in the New Year Bev, and best wishes
Larry
PS I am not avoiding the issue of torture by IRA, I will get back to that after Genie and I have our wee bit of sunday morning