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Toppling the Irish State (theory)

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  • 17-11-2009 11:26pm
    #1
    newklear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 34 ✭


    Thoughts just sprung to mind of what if an armed uprising were able to seize control of the country and topple the Irish state, replacing it with a new state of the popular people's wish.

    Now I know there isn't that many of us Irish people on this tiny island, but lets say in theory 3.5 million of us lived in an state that we didn't like. The other 0.5 million lets say were made up of the hardcore Irish staters, such as the president and her government subordinates.

    Then we have the army and the guards who are there to protect the state itself for such an internal threat.

    Aim: To oust the Irish state along with its army and replace it with a new system, lets call it "The new Irish State".

    How:

    1st: Weapons would need to be acquired. These would be distributed evenly across the communities of the country in total secret.

    2nd: The co-ordinated ambush and seizure of all Irish military installations, from bases, ports, airfields, etc. Lock down of all state military personnel into compounds, such as the curragh.

    3rd: Seizure of all garda stations and lock down of garda personnel.

    With these 3 phases complete, everything else falls into place. The government is dissolved and a new constitution is established, which will be presented to all captured state personnel.

    In THEORY this is how it should work.

    Obviously if something like this were ever to be actually implemented, it would need more than a vague idea put up on boards.


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    #2
    Local-womanizer
    Registered Users Posts: 3,798 ✭✭✭Local-womanizer


    Saying you would take the Military and Gardai barrack is a world of difference to actually doing it. For you to aquire arms would take alot of effort which would not go unnoticed.If you attacked one Barracks the rest would be waiting,all with high-tech gear and modern training. For it to work the Army and Gardai would need to be onside.

    Anyway,its just easier to vote in a new goverment!


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    #3
    b12mearse
    Closed Accounts Posts: 283 ✭✭b12mearse


    I would say it would be possible to topple the state after the budget. But my only concern in doing it would be the European Union. Considering the fact the new state isnt established democraticaly we may have some international problems and the new Federal Europe may not take lightly to it.


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    #4
    Donny5
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,827 ✭✭✭Donny5


    b12mearse wrote: »
    I would say it would be possible to topple the state after the budget. But my only concern in doing it would be the European Union. Considering the fact the new state isnt established democraticaly we may have some international problems and the new Federal Europe may not take lightly to it.

    Neither would many of her citizens. If there was a majority in search of a new government, wouldn't they elect a new government?

    Anyway, OP, here's a book that you should read.


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    #5
    Alkers
    Registered Users Posts: 6,811 ✭✭✭Alkers


    From personal experience it wouldn't take much to "take over" most barracks I've been in side. Around 10 armed guys who knew what to do and where to go and you'd be sorted ;)


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    #6
    Mahatma coat
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 6,869 ✭✭✭Mahatma coat


    One would presume that elections had been Proposed by your side and denied by the incumbent government. if this was the case and 3.5 million of the 4 million people inthe country wanted change then there would really be no need to seize control of the Army, The Irish army is in theory an non political organisation whose primary function is the Defence of the PEOPLE of Ireland, so if you have an overwhelmin majority of those people demanding change then the Army probably wont give you much hassle, hell a lot of them will be on your side, think Thailand last year.


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    #7
    private2bcadet
    Closed Accounts Posts: 116 ✭✭private2bcadet


    Mahatma coat wrote: »
    One would presume that elections had been Proposed by your side and denied by the incumbent government. if this was the case and 3.5 million of the 4 million people inthe country wanted change then there would really be no need to seize control of the Army, The Irish army is in theory an non political organisation whose primary function is the Defence of the PEOPLE of Ireland, so if you have an overwhelmin majority of those people demanding change then the Army probably wont give you much hassle, hell a lot of them will be on your side, think Thailand last year.


    "to defend the STATE against all forms of armed aggression, internal or external"

    im in the reserves, and even as a reservist and not a full time soldier, i can tell you, there is no way in hell you would get no hastle from the army.


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    #8
    major bill
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,421 ✭✭✭major bill


    dont forget under the legislation of the lisbon treaty if this attack was to happen on the state it could pave the way for foreign troops to be deployed here to squash it.


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    #9
    private2bcadet
    Closed Accounts Posts: 116 ✭✭private2bcadet


    i had written up a huge response explaining how the army and guards would destroy such an attempt. but then i realised you had said if 3.5 million supported it.

    even with that amount of support. that kind of thing doesnt happen in the EU. im not totally sure, but in my opinion, the EU would intervine with force. the EU although an economic community is one big military alliance also. and its the irish state that is a member of the EU. if you tried to topple that state, you would be attacking an EU state,... even with the support of most of the nation, the irish defence forces would be able to hold of such a thing quite well for a while, and before you know it there'd be british troops coming over the border(with the present british government anyway), and the nordic battle group, which ireland is part of, which also includes norway and sweden etc would definitely intervine with force. you cant just attack a member of the EU, even from the inside, and not expect its corresponding battle group not to intervine.

    now if this was to happen with a more realistic number of about 20% of population support (kinda the average in coup's), it would have no hope.. the garda siochana is actually an armed police force. its just the lads on the beat and the likes of the traffic corps that arnt armed. the rest are. you wouldnt just 'take' a garda station, maybe some of those little country prefabs but any of the normal stations in towns with a populus of about 8000 up youd have no hope! they literally would kill you. you also have to bear in mind, that a lot of stations now have the new armed response units (not to be confused with the ERU), who nearly always when in uniform are armed, to the teeth. and from what ive seen, they're just like soldiers in blue.

    as for the army barracks/bases,... in every army barracks and base there is a thing we call the guard house. 24 hours a day there are armed/armoured soldiers, who are actually there to stop that kind of thing happening.

    it just wouldnt be able to happen, in either your context where 3.5 mil support it, or in the realistic context


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    #10
    TheDuderino
    Closed Accounts Posts: 94 ✭✭TheDuderino


    What if we have a mutiny, say Finner Camp troops kick off a coup... people rally to them. Other units....

    ?


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    #11
    tac foley
    Registered Users Posts: 5,504 ✭✭✭tac foley


    major bill wrote: »
    dont forget under the legislation of the lisbon treaty if this attack was to happen on the state it could pave the way for foreign troops to be deployed here to squash it.

    If things got so out of hand that it was necessary to post other NATO troops to Ireland to calm things down, it probably would NOT include troops from the UK, who just might be seen as having a slightly different agenda as an occupying force, due to the unfortunate history connecting the two nations.

    Instead, let's think about who you would get that -

    1. is not - militarily speaking - overstretched for operational reasons.

    2. has no historically-connected ax[e] to grind.

    3. would not leave an easily-accomplished and lasting legacy of revenge and bad feeling, simply because they are coming from a LONG way away.....

    4. be readily identifiable as not only different in appearance, but would not find it easy to mix in civilian company, and have a language that is difficult, if not totally unitelligible, to the average Irish citizen.

    Let me introduce - THE TURKISH ARMY.

    Lots of good things about them -

    1. The Turkish Army is HUGE - the second largest in NATO after the US [around 402,000 active personel] - and it could easily occupy the RoI on a vast scale without even noticing.

    2. They are cheap to keep - there are quite a few Doner Kebab houses in the RoI these days, and in any case, they only eat twice a day. Being moslems all your sausage and bacon farms would be quite safe from unwelcome attention.

    3. They are 99.9999% Moslem of the kind that do not go around blowing themselves, or other innocent folks, to a thin wall-decorating paste like others of their pursuasion.

    4. They are disciplined like very few other groups of people you have ever met in your lives - a unit commander who has NOT executed at least five soldiers in his two year tour is considered to be just too soft to promote.

    Of course, there are a few downsides to all this -

    1. they are truly ferocious, when annoyed, to the extent that each and every single one of them - females included - can easily make Mad Dan O'Mad, the very maddest of all the mad persons, look like Bo Peep.

    2. they really DO shoot their own men. I was based in Eastern Turkey for a while with a unit that executed six of its own soldiers by firing squad for 'not being awake enough whilst carrying out the duties of a sentinel', including a pair of brothers. One of my former students, a captain at the time, actually shot dead the corporal of the guard platoon that was ten minutes late on post on the Iraq border.

    3. the last time they were engaged in serious fighting was in the Korean War, where they earned the grudging respect of their North Korean captors [when on the very rare occasion they were taken PoW] by not only refusing to answer any questions, but by going on partial hunger strike and refusing to eat three meals a day and contempuously ignoring their daily beatings by the tactical questioners. This may have been due to a number of reasons -

    a. a marked shortage of Korean-to-Turkish interpreters.

    b. the fact that the Turks only got fed twice a day anyhow.

    c. they got beaten TWICE a day by their own NCO's.

    In fact, the RNK prison of war camp was pretty much a holiday for them, one said afterwards.

    No, you really do not want the Turks in Ireland.....

    tac


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    #12
    Donny5
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,827 ✭✭✭Donny5


    tac foley wrote: »
    4. They are disciplined like very few other groups of people you have ever met in your lives - a unit commander who has NOT executed at least five soldiers in his two year tour is considered to be just too soft to promote.

    Do you have a source for this? I'm having difficulty finding anything out about this.


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    #13
    tac foley
    Registered Users Posts: 5,504 ✭✭✭tac foley


    Donny5 wrote: »
    Do you have a source for this? I'm having difficulty finding anything out about this.

    Only from the guy who was passed over as being 'too soft to promote'. He was stopped at major, sent away from his unit in a kind of disgrace to UK to do a bunch of courses for a few years to get him out of the way, and AFAIK, never went any further.

    You are hardly going to see it published in An Cosantoir. But it was common knowledge a few years ago in units covering the Turkey/Iraq border. Remember that unlike many armed forces in NATO, the Turkish soldier is a conscript, not a volunteer.

    And the 'Asker' - basic soldier in the Turkish Army - is not the same as the average Joe in your army.

    tac


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    #14
    Donny5
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,827 ✭✭✭Donny5


    tac foley wrote: »
    Only from the guy who was passed over as being 'too soft to promote'. He was stopped at major, sent away from his unit in a kind of disgrace to UK to do a bunch of courses for a few years to get him out of the way, and AFAIK, never went any further.

    That sounds a lot like hearsay to me. I'm not saying it's not true, but an anecdote is not a datum.


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    #15
    tac foley
    Registered Users Posts: 5,504 ✭✭✭tac foley


    Donny5 wrote: »
    That sounds a lot like hearsay to me. I'm not saying it's not true, but an anecdote is not a datum.

    You could be right.

    YOU got any good stories?

    tac


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    #16
    Morpheus
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 2,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭Morpheus


    Where do i sign up for this Turkish army!?

    Do they eat turkish delights?

    :D


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    #17
    TheDuderino
    Closed Accounts Posts: 94 ✭✭TheDuderino


    Morphéus wrote: »
    Where do i sign up for this Turkish army!?

    Do they eat turkish delights?

    :D

    Nahh they'd just call it "Delights"

    The french hardly call it french kissing now do they!?!


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    #18
    Morpheus
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 2,688 Mod ✭✭✭✭Morpheus


    The French?

    Pesky cheese eating surrender monkies!


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    #19
    BrianD
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,221 ✭✭✭BrianD


    newklear wrote: »
    Thoughts just sprung to mind of what if an armed uprising were able to seize control of the country and topple the Irish state, replacing it with a new state of the popular people's wish.

    Now I know there isn't that many of us Irish people on this tiny island, but lets say in theory 3.5 million of us lived in an state that we didn't like. The other 0.5 million lets say were made up of the hardcore Irish staters, such as the president and her government subordinates.

    Then we have the army and the guards who are there to protect the state itself for such an internal threat.

    Aim: To oust the Irish state along with its army and replace it with a new system, lets call it "The new Irish State".

    How:

    1st: Weapons would need to be acquired. These would be distributed evenly across the communities of the country in total secret.

    2nd: The co-ordinated ambush and seizure of all Irish military installations, from bases, ports, airfields, etc. Lock down of all state military personnel into compounds, such as the curragh.

    3rd: Seizure of all garda stations and lock down of garda personnel.

    With these 3 phases complete, everything else falls into place. The government is dissolved and a new constitution is established, which will be presented to all captured state personnel.

    In THEORY this is how it should work.

    Obviously if something like this were ever to be actually implemented, it would need more than a vague idea put up on boards.

    Why would you even bother when we live in a constitutional democracy with local and national government elections at 5 year intervals at most?

    Given that a large portion of Irish citizens can't be bothered to go mark a ballot paper, I doubt if you'd find much demand for a co-ordinated armed insurrection. You'd probably spend more time agreeing minimum wages, benefits and overtime for your popular uprising. Don't do it on a Monday either as half of your Popular Front for the liberation of Ireland would probably ring in "sick".


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    #20
    HavingCrack
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,847 ✭✭✭HavingCrack


    The OP is probably long gone at this stage but the Belgian Revolution against the Netherlands, the Communard Rebellion, Mussolini's rise to power, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War in the Republican zone etc are all examples of coup d'etats or varients of it that succeeded against a better armed millitary.


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    #21
    BrianD
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,221 ✭✭✭BrianD


    HavingCrack wrote: »
    The OP is probably long gone at this stage but the Belgian Revolution against the Netherlands, the Communard Rebellion, Mussolini's rise to power, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War in the Republican zone etc are all examples of coup d'etats or varients of it that succeeded against a better armed millitary.

    Differen times, different needs. While nobody seems to be satisfied with the current state of affairs,there is no desire to descent into anarachy where all will be lost. It's the kind of situation where you neighbour who decides to take up arms also decides that he needs your house.

    As I said, why bother with a coup d'etat when we live in a democracy. We are don't live a state of oppression. Generally, we all contributed to the bubble and the place we find ourselves in.


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    #22
    bouse23
    Registered Users Posts: 9 ✭bouse23


    if you were going to seize a military barracks a sunday afternoon would probably be the best time. in the irish military unlike many other countrys militaries personnel tend to live off barracks and commute to work just like ordinary workers. but even at their quietest there would still be 20 to 30 people on duty about 10 armed as well as off duty soldiers who live in the barracks. so you would need probably 50 or so armed people plus you would need a lot of explosives to get into the armoury and in an era of mobile phones you wouldnt have much time before word gets out . and reinforcements arrive


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    #23
    meathstevie
    Registered Users Posts: 4,772 ✭✭✭meathstevie


    If in the OP's hypothetical scenario of more than 75% of the population demanding change no outside political/military intervention has happened yet I'd be very surprised.

    If that kind of situation ever developed in a Western European country where a government is trying to hold on to power against the will of the overwhelming majority of the population you can be absolutely sure some form of EU intervention would happen. I expect refusing to recognise election results would be a trigger and indicator to the outside something is fundamentally wrong and action needs to be taken.


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    #24
    chucken1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,761 ✭✭✭chucken1


    Toppling the Irish State (theory)

    Heres a theory..leave my state alone thank you, its unsteady enough without you toppling it! :mad:


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    #25
    chucken1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,761 ✭✭✭chucken1


    Morphéus wrote: »
    The French?

    Pesky cheese eating surrender monkies!

    I hate that phrase. What should they have done??

    And DO NOT FORGET THE RESISTANCE!

    What are Irish right now?? What will they insult us with??


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    #26
    ReacherCreature
    Registered Users Posts: 4,500 ✭✭✭ReacherCreature


    chucken1 wrote: »
    I hate that phrase. What should they have done??

    And DO NOT FORGET THE RESISTANCE!

    What are Irish right now?? What will they insult us with??

    There's several accounts related to French surrender and the like. One that sticks out for me is when the French were under a bombing raid during the German invasion and they refused to go up and counter the raid. The defeatist attitude they adopted in some cases, lives on through history.


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    #27
    meathstevie
    Registered Users Posts: 4,772 ✭✭✭meathstevie


    chucken1 wrote: »
    I hate that phrase. What should they have done??

    And DO NOT FORGET THE RESISTANCE!

    What are Irish right now?? What will they insult us with??

    You mean in the spring of 1940 ? Apply their superior Renault tanks in the same way as the Germans applied their then inferior armour in a concentrated mass to smash through the broad thin French defences and concentrate on defending against Stuka bombers as well. But sure, hindsight is always 20/20 and the Nazi's had a couple of years perfectioning their "blitzkrieg" in Spain and with the invasion of Poland and once the French defences were breeched plugging them was nearly impossible. And also nobody was quite willing to repeat the slaughter of WWI where France lost about a quarter of it's male population of combattant age.


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    #28
    Humans eh!
    Registered Users Posts: 403 ✭✭Humans eh!


    chucken1 wrote: »
    I hate that phrase. What should they have done??

    And DO NOT FORGET THE RESISTANCE!

    What are Irish right now?? What will they insult us with??

    We seem to have surrendered our destiny to the money men of Europe.
    And are offered free cheese by our government.
    QED :D


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    #29
    chucken1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,761 ✭✭✭chucken1


    Humans eh! wrote: »
    We seem to have surrendered our destiny to the money men of Europe.
    And are offered free cheese by our government.
    QED :D

    Just the comment I was waiting for ;)

    So,my point being,that when we do something,we can earn the right to comment on what happened in France in WW2.


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    #30
    RMD
    Registered Users Posts: 2,662 ✭✭✭RMD


    Considering various intelligence servies worldwide are continually trying to infilitrate and bust arms dealing rings, how do you plan on importing enough arms to take down 8,000 soldiers and 14,500 Gardai?

    It's never going to happen, discuss hypothetical situations and plans all you want, even if you got the weapons nothing would happen. We are a naturally lazy nation of people, we all love to talk and bitch but nobody seems to want to stand up when it comes to being counted.


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    #31
    PatsytheNazi
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,260 ✭✭✭PatsytheNazi


    Toppling the Irish State ? I would have thought Fianna Fail and their friends in Anglo Irish bank etc have already done that :mad: Indeed if I had my way I'd proscribe Fianna Fail as a criminal organization and intern half of them.

    It should be pointed out that the interning of FF may not sound as far fetched as some might think. During the troubles it was the regular demad of many in FF and the rest of them FG, Labour against Sinn Fein or anyone who held Republican views. Indeed the very same FF introduced internment of Sinn Fein members several times in the 1930's, 40's, 50's into the 60's as a " threat to the stability and welfare of the state " and it turns out that the soldeirs of corruption, cronyism and incompetence were the biggest threat to Ireland than anyone :mad:


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