(UPDATE 5/22/14 I finally did a post going into why I believe it's inacurate to describe the IRA as "terrorists" and it's here)
Peter King, a GOP US Representative from New York, has been a big supporter of Irish Republicanism and specifically Sinn Fein and NORAID, an American group suspected in the past of supporting the IRA, although it might be a lot more accurate to say that they supported and today support SF. He is very conservative and has expressed support for the use (in the War on Terror, in Iraq, and Afghanistan) of interrogation techniques that are torture (for example, see this and this). He has also spear-headed congressional hearings on the alleged radicalization of American Muslims (see this, this and this)
In the 2nd link from the bottom of the above paragraph, is a post on the blog of the Southern Poverty Law Center. In the discussion (which was deleted when they started using a different system for comments) I spent a lot of time explaining that the IRA was/is not a terrorist organization- people thought King was a bigoted hypocrite because he supported the IRA’s campaign but is hostile to groups like Al-Qaeda which a lot of people think are comparable to the IRA. Although this doesn’t have anything to do with the question of terrorism, in another way it’s relevant to point out that there are many things indicating that the IRA over the last 30 years or so has been more or less left-wing (it's probably safe to assume that, for example, if a majority of SF members are anti-homophobic, a similar majority of IRA members are anti-homophobic) (for some examples of that see most of the first half of this).
As I explain here, only about .2% of the IRA's operations intentionally resulted in civilian death, and only about .1% unintentionally resulted in civilian death. I think it's likely that no more than .1% of their operations were unsuccessfully aimed at killing civilians.
When the IRA were bombing commercial property, they always (or at least almost always something like 99% of the time) planned on issuing a warning. Something like 99% of the time the warning was issued, the target was evacuated and no one was killed. The goal of such operations was at least partly to inflict financial damage on the business community who, it was hoped, would then pressure the British government to withdraw from Ireland. They were probably also often aimed at demonstrating that the IRA was not beaten when the British would often claim that they were. Bombings of non-military government property were aimed at disrupting government operations, and putting pressure directly on the government (warnings were always or almost always issued and civilians were evacuated). The issuing of warnings in these two categories, and the tiny % of the time that they intentionally killed civilians and the fact that somewhere around 2/3 of their operations were aimed at the security forces, all indicate that some very large % of IRA members and leaders were not into terrorizing civilians.
I can understand people wanting to expose King as the bigoted hypocrite he is, but doing so by calling the IRA terrorists is just not accurate or helpful. What would be a great approach would be to focus on the issue of torture- torture used by the US or it’s allies in recent years, and the torture used by the British in the early 1970s in N. Ireland. King LOVES water-boarding and in general approves of the torture techniques used by the US. I know that some methods have been used in both situations. I’m not as familiar with the details as I could be and I’m not capable right now of engaging in an off-line discussions with journalists, or debate with supporters of King. But I figure some of you, or someone that one of you knows will want to have the information ready to attack King over his bigoted hypocrisy. The thing is, you can find a lot of info about the Irish part of this in a book that is (mostly) available on-line here. Although the author was very partisan as a republican, his book seems to be well respected as the web-site it’s on is very neutral and academic, and about 1/3 of the information the site offers on the subject of internment in the early 1970s was written by him.
UPDATE 5/31/11 I'm still not feeling like reading the book linked to right above to refresh my memory and learn some new details. But while reading another very good source, I found a brief description of the "sensory deprivation" techniques used on eleven of the internees during seven days. According to Michael Farrell's "Northern Ireland: The Orange State" (page 283) they were hooded the entire time; they were completely isolated, and didn't know where they were; they were severely beaten; they were forced to stand spread-eagled against walls until they collapsed; they were given hardly any food; they were subjected to "white noise;" they were prevented from sleeping. The book also refers to another torture technique used on the internees in general (apparently not the 11 I just referred to). That was taking hooded internees up in helicopters, and then, when the helicopter comes back down to something like 3-5 feet above the ground, the internee is pushed out, thinking that he's much higher up than he is. Sounds like water-boarding.
If King’s bigoted hypocrisy is highlighted and becomes an issue in America, that will make it very likely that Sinn Fein will tell him to go away. If they do that publicly, it will, to some small degree, probably affect how much support he has. Also, it will probably result in Sinn Fein changing their approach to generating support in America (in a way that both SF and the American left will benefit from).
In any case, I hope this was worth your time to read- I really think that King can be hammered on this. And maybe you or someone you know will be able to use the information about torture in N. Ireland.
Tom
UPDATE 10/8/12 Apparently there was some use of waterboarding by the security forces in N. Ireland. See this and this.
UPDATE 4/22/18 In the 1990 dramatic movie "Hidden Agenda," there is an allegation of what we now call water-boarding. I'm not sure where the writer(s) got that from, but I am also pretty sure that condemning water boarding wasn't back then the popular cause that it has been in the last 15 or so years (in the movie, they don't use the phrase "water boarding") and I wouldn't be surprised if the writer(s) included it not because they wanted to take a swipe at George W. Bush etc. but because they did some research about what torture techniques the British used in N. Ireland and found some references to that one.
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