Sunday Bloody Sunday
Today, the British government released a 5,000 page report regarding the 1972 “Bloody Sunday” shootings by the British Army that left fourteen unarmed civilians dead in Northern Ireland following a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march. The Saville Inquiry (1998-2010) charged with investigating the incident concluded that the British Army had fired first and without warning, and that those who had been shot were in fact unarmed, despite previous testimony to the contrary. Prime Minister David Cameron issued an emphatic, and surprising, apology for what occurred in 1972, stating that the actions of the British military were “both unjustified and unjustifiable.”
The shootings were part of an era known as “The Troubles” (1968-1998, approximately) in which factional violence plagued Northern Ireland, Britain, and mainland Europe as Roman Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists fought with one another, often with violent and bloody consequences. Following “Bloody Sunday,” the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other smaller republican groups that have been labeled as terrorist organizations engaged in an armed campaign against the British military, resulting in an estimated 3,483 deaths between 1969-1998.
Although “The Troubles” arguably ended with the Belfast Agreement, Great Britain still faces deep issues in regard to its “homegrown” terrorism and is still plagued by violent activity. In March 2009, two soldiers and a police officer were killed by republican terrorists, and the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA) was involved in three separate attacks in January of this year, one involving the car bombing of a police officer. Multiple other heedless incidents have occurred in this year alone, and there has been an unfortunate uptick in their frequency.
The point of this is not to give anyone a history lesson, per se.
In the wake of the failed Times Square bombing and the arrest of two young men in New Jersey with suspected ties to al-Shabaab, a terrorist organization in Somalia, the idea of terrorism in our “backyard” has once again been pushed to the foreground of newspaper headlines and many of our minds. None of this is to say that we have forgotten the horrors of 9/11. What has been an issue, and will continue to be an issue, though, is the fact that many Americans believe that terrorist organizations and their activities are “over there,” that terrorism in general is an esoteric, intangible thing. In some cases yes, this is true. Most Americans will never have to directly deal with anything related to terrorism. But what must be kept in mind is that there are other states out there, well-developed, industrialized, modern states much like our own, that have their own domestic terrorist issues to grapple with. In the case of Great Britain, these terrorist organizations are not based in the Middle East or Africa, nor do they have any ties to Islam (these categories are mentioned because “terrorism” often reduces Americans to these stereotypes). Instead, these are organizations developed not to wage a “global jihad,” but rather to affect significant change within their state and region.
As Americans, we must remember that terrorism comes in many, many forms and we cannot limit ourselves to thinking of a single geographic region or religion when the word is mentioned. We must also keep in mind that we are not alone in the fact we have domestic terrorism to deal with – other states and regions, Great Britain in this particular instance, have struggled with the issue for decades. Each situation has its own particular circumstances and prescribed solutions, of course, but what the events in Great Britain today should remind Americans is that our situation here in the U.S. is not, dare I say it, terribly unique or becoming of us to say that we are “special” because we are the targets of domestic terrorists. Perhaps once these lofty ideas are dispensed with, the U.S. may find itself in a more favorable position to deal with domestic terrorism, whatever its roots or goals.
