Michael D Higgins insists he is President of Ireland, refuses to commemorate partition

Ah, where did we ever hear the word 'Humanitarian Intervention' as cover for invasions? Sure Hiter used that playbook when he wanted to rescue the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. Bush & Blair of course used similar language to justify the invasion of Iraq.

You can call it what you want Francie, but it would have been an invasion, an invasion on a NATO nuclear power may I add.

But since you asked where you advocated it....

Why have an army indeed!!

Chilling... very chilling.

It's as clear as day that you advocated unilateral military intervention from the Irish State into the NI which even today is part of the United Kingdom. You can dance on a pinhead all day long and pretend it's 'peacekeeping' but nobody would believe you. I don't think even you would believe you.

Never mind yourself advocating that we should have not signed up to the treaty and invaded the north to ensure no partition took place in 1921, regardless of the cost and lives that would be lost.

The fact that you still hold this belief is outstanding.

The Irish government could have called it the second coming of Jesus Christ, or a charity march.... it wouldn't have mattered because it would have been an invasion. Foreign military personal crossing a border uninvited is nothing else.

Are you honestly and seriously saying that the Irish government should have ordered Defense Forces personal over the border armed with their rifles and live ammo to face a much better equipped and numerous BA?

You live in cloud cuckoo land Francie if you actually believe it would have ended well.

If someone plants a bomb, the responsibility lies with the people who planted the bomb, who organised the planting of the bomb and those from the sidelines who gave succour to the planting of the bomb.

Certainly true; one has to take responsibility for one's own actions.

It would however be naive in the extreme to think these things happened in a vacuum and not examine what led to it. One can fully accept that the responsibility for planting a bomb lies with the person who planted said bomb, while also believing that responsibility for creating an environment where things could fester to that point should also be discussed. To actively ignore that end of the equation, stick one's fingers in their ears and pretend that the Provos were wholly and solely responsible and if they hadn't showed up we'd all have been hand in hand signing Kum Ba Yah.....well that just implies a dishonest, agenda laden approach to the topic.

God knows there's plenty of responsibility to go around in the short history of NI.

The public outrage over Bloody Sunday was drowned out by an active attempt by the British government to cover it up, Blanch.

It was also one of the biggest recruitment drivers the PIRA ever had.

How you can look at what happened on Bloody Sunday and figure the Civil Rights Campaign was winning, I have no idea. I can tell you for a fact that the majority of the Nationalist community in NI didn't feel like it was winning at the time. Unfortunately we don't have a crystal ball to find out how true your statement is but given their track record, I'd find it tough to believe the British were just going to decide to play fair immediately after shooting innocent protestors in the street.

To be clear, before you attempt to deflect further I am not saying that this makes the actions of the PIRA correct or just. My point remains as it was; trying to view the actions of the PIRA in a vacuum without addressing how things festered to that point.....well it is either dishonest or naive.

Attributing responsibility to the British government for the sectarian state filled with blatant discrimination doesn't diminish the responsibility the PIRA have for their actions......nor do the actions of the PIRA afterwards excuse the actions of the British government. You always seem very comfortable with the first half of that but very quick to try and ignore the second half with your whataboutery.

The remnants of the sectarian bigoted state are most clearly seen in education. Those most resistant to change in education are the two sectarian parties of Sinn Fein and the DUP. So whatever about the past, the clear responsibility for hanging on to the vestiges of sectarianism lie with them.

I missed this, Mark.

The Irish state didn't apply enough diplomatic and political pressure, and yes the pressure that was applied was behind closed doors; that is part of the problem. The pressure should've been applied publicly and openly instead, in a manner that could at least potentially have drawn more attention.

Nor did it provide enough support for Irish citizens ran out of their homes and across the border as refugees; the government memo describing them as, 'ungrateful' and suggesting that many were just going on holidays certainly didn't give a great impression.

I'm still in total agreement that a military intervention that would've likely been over before lunch time would have been ill advised.

We all know why SF and the DUP continue with the sectarian education system, it benefits them directly with bums and seats, with bigger wallets full of expenses paid for by the Queen's shilling.

Doesn't seem to been mentioned much (if ever) in these recent NI threads.

I dunno what they are teaching in NI but it can't be history, as the lack of knowledge about UK, NI and Ireland shared history has been shocking.

You can hardly say the civil rights campaign was winning, or that any of this was connected to bloody Sunday, if a large bombing campaign had kicked off long before Bloody Sunday.

When people feel they've no option but to resort to violence, 99.9% of the time they are wrong.

In Northern Ireland, it was wrong, there were other options, but the PIRA's actions destroyed any chance of those other options working.

You wouldn't want to know about how bad the education system up there is. One of the huge costs of a united Ireland would be fixing their completely broken education system up there.

Yeh, batoning civil rights protestors off the streets was the favoured 'option' along with arrest and detention and intimidation. Pogroms in Derry and Belfast and burning out of house and home all over the north in sporadic attacks. Within 3 weeks of the British Army arriving, an 'option' welcomed by nationalists they were attacking them indiscriminately in an attempt to bring the 'law and order' favoured by the sectarian regime in Stormont.

That is exactly where those with the power abdicated their responsibility with flagrant disregard for the welfare of all the people. The Irish government stood idly by in word and deed too.

There were very few options left.

I'm sure the loyalist fanbois on this thread would have absolutely no problem with that though.

the only reason the uk cared about the malvenas was because they needed to prop up an at the time, failing prime minister who had little chance of re-election.

so, they cut the fleet that was protecting the islands, allowed the argentines to take back their islands, an then went over to retake them and boom, more terms for the failing prime minister with a populous right behind her more then ever before.

perhapse they were also aware of the oil deposits down there back as far as then also but i guess we are unlikely to ever know that one for definite.

but make no mistake, if there was no sort of strategic reason to do so, they would just have left the malvenas to the argentines and negotiated safe passage for anyone wanting to be repatriated to the uk.

northern ireland is not and never will really be part of the uk, it is only ruled by it and is part of it in name only, since the treaty to partition the island was based on blackmail and the threat of violence upon the irish people if the dignitaries didn't sign it.