I’m not going to get too into the politics of the troubles, but I think it’s kind of worth remembering that this did happen in the context of an armed conflict, morality gets fuzzy.
Thinking about it in the context of modern conflicts, let’s say a Palestinian or Lebanese group assassinated an influential Israeli businessman who was vocally advocating for Israel continuing their operations, or perhaps a Ukrainian group assassinated a Russian oligarch.
Or hell, the guys who shot the United healthcare CEO or Charlie Kirk.
In some theoretical future where there’s some kind of peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine/Lebanon, or the US has gone through some kind of civil war to overthrow MAGA types, would it seem so unreasonable to want those people to be freed as part of the negotiations?
Or looking further back, let’s say members of the French or Polish or whatever resistance in WWII had assassinated a German businessman who helped fund the Nazi war machine, wouldn’t we have expected them to be freed after the war?
And I think likely that’s a similar kind of light at that least some Irish people would view these guys in.
And of course, depending on what side of the conflict you were on, you may not see things that way. If you were a Nazi, or if you support Israel or Russia or Trump, you’d probably think of those assassins as nothing but criminals or terrorists, but as the saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom-fighter
I’m not going to get too into the politics of the troubles, but I think it’s kind of worth remembering that this did happen in the context of an armed conflict, morality gets fuzzy.
Thinking about it in the context of modern conflicts, let’s say a Palestinian or Lebanese group assassinated an influential Israeli businessman who was vocally advocating for Israel continuing their operations, or perhaps a Ukrainian group assassinated a Russian oligarch.
Or hell, the guys who shot the United healthcare CEO or Charlie Kirk.
In some theoretical future where there’s some kind of peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine/Lebanon, or the US has gone through some kind of civil war to overthrow MAGA types, would it seem so unreasonable to want those people to be freed as part of the negotiations?
Or looking further back, let’s say members of the French or Polish or whatever resistance in WWII had assassinated a German businessman who helped fund the Nazi war machine, wouldn’t we have expected them to be freed after the war?
And I think likely that’s a similar kind of light at that least some Irish people would view these guys in.
And of course, depending on what side of the conflict you were on, you may not see things that way. If you were a Nazi, or if you support Israel or Russia or Trump, you’d probably think of those assassins as nothing but criminals or terrorists, but as the saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom-fighter