"How can you prove that Saudi's chopping off folks heads is morally different to the IRA, or the British Army,"
The Saudis are a dynastic Dictatorship seeking to suppress opposition - the IRA were a Guerrilla Army originally fighting the most powerful Empire on the Planet, and later, irregulars fighting a powerful, well armed state with a standing army
THyey used the tactics all guerrilla fighters and resistance fighters have always used when fighting overwhelming odds
Why conine your arguments to the IRA - the Unionists weer the first to introduce the gun into twentieth century Britain and the first to let blood in the 'Trouble' - and they did it with the full co-operation of the RUC and later, the British Army (who did a fair amount of civilian slaughter themselves)
There's a seven part series being shown by the BBC (over here at least) e
entitled, ' The Secret History of the Troubles (can't wait for episode 5 tonight)
It showed from day one how the British Army which went in to keep 'the warring factions apart' sided with the Unionists - from the Magilligan butchery, Bloody and Sunday right through to the Dublin bombings
Not often mentioned in polite circles
Jim