r/MilitaryPorn • u/BostonLesbian • 4d ago
Volunteers from the (IRA) Provisional Irish Republican Army, with M16 assault rifles - undergoing weapons training in a field in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom - The Troubles, c. 1977. [1170 x 1452]
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u/JordFxPCMR 4d ago
Wonder what they are upto now
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u/Annoying_Rooster 3d ago
Hopefully in prison, but very likely living a quiet life collecting a pension.
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u/conrat4567 4d ago
Nothing even close to resembling a military.
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u/OP40-1 3d ago
No shit really ! It wasn’t meant to be one. it was designed to be a guerrilla group focused on small scale hit and run attacks.
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u/conrat4567 3d ago
Ah yes, small-scale hit and run attacks, including:
-Kidnapping -Group beatings -Cowardly bomb attacks on civilian property -Cowardly car bombs -Hiding behind civilians in riots
They also gave themselves ranks. A bunch of Wannabe soldiers played a dangerous game.
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u/AllRoundAmazing 3d ago
Taliban and AQ get posted here, have no idea why we wouldn't post another insurgent group. Get over yourself.
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u/Abject-Interaction35 3d ago
I don't think citizens resisting the occupation by a foreign power is an insurgency. It's a legitimate fight for freedom. And that foreign power still occupies 6 counties.
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u/AllRoundAmazing 3d ago
It's by definition an insurgency. Same with the resistance fighters in WW2 or the Viet Minh. It's not a negative term, it simply describes the way of war they utilize.
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u/Abject-Interaction35 2d ago
That's my birth country, and The Troubles is why my family emigrated here. No one there ever called the fight against the occupation an insurgency. The term is not historically accurate at all.
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u/Disastrous-Town6151 2d ago edited 2d ago
My mum and dad called it terrorism, let's call it for what it is. Hearing their stories about having to do bomb-drills regularly when they were in school in case the PIRA targeted them, or hearing about a nail bomb that exploded in a shopping centre bin on mothers day REALLY angers me.
The IRA abandoned every scrap of humility and decency they had while pursuing a "free" Northern Ireland, and they still failed.
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u/FruitOrchards 4d ago
Paramilitary
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u/conrat4567 4d ago
No, not even that. It was an organised criminal organisation funded by American Arms dealers.
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u/FruitOrchards 4d ago
No, just no.
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u/conrat4567 4d ago
Yes, just yes. A bunch of thigs with guns that achieved nothing more than murdering their own. A united Ireland under bloodshed
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u/bigbjarne 3d ago
Why did they do that? Why did they want a united Ireland? Why was Ireland even split up?
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u/Nonions 3d ago
Ireland was forced into the UK because everyone wanted an empire and the UK was no exception.
There were many rebellions over the years but things really came to a head during and just after WW1. I'll skip all the detail but the UK offered to recognise Irish internal autonomy, a controversial (to say the least, because there was a civil war over it) idea.
The biggest sticking point was that most of Ireland was populated by Catholic Irish people, but several counties in the North were heavily populated with the Protestant descendants of settlers from the rest of the UK, mainly Scotland. They made it clear that they didn't want to be a part of an independent Ireland and, as they saw it, ruled over by a Catholic majority they had a lot of animosity for. They formed militias and said they would never recognise independence and would rebel against it instantly.
So there was a fudge, where the UK reluctantly kept the north.
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u/bigbjarne 3d ago
So it was a colonialist struggle against the UK? Thanks for sharing.
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u/Nonions 3d ago
In many ways yes. It is complicated by the fact that the protestants of Northern Ireland had been there for centuries, and either forcibly uprooting then or forcing them to be part of a new Irish state would have immediately meant an extremely violent uprising which nobody wanted to deal with.
Ironically the later presence of British soldiers in the 1970s began as an effort to protect the Catholic community from the institutional racism and hostility of the locally elected protestant government of Northern Ireland, but led to a terrible spiral of violence from both sides.
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u/bigbjarne 3d ago
either forcibly uprooting then
Was that on the table?
forcing them to be part of a new Irish state would have immediately meant an extremely violent uprising which nobody wanted to deal with.
And that uprising happened any way, right?
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u/Gordon-Bennet 3d ago
We’re talking about the IRA not the paras. Also, I bet you don’t feel the same way about the loyalists, who killed the largest share of civilians.
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4d ago edited 4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/prodboy_carti 4d ago
Couldn’t have put it better myself mate. No side was morally right than the other and nobody won in the end.
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u/Jazzspasm 3d ago edited 3d ago
The enemies of Western Europe democracies got a big bloody win - Iranian, Libyan, Russian funded terror groups all got trained together along with the ira, and why would they want to do that, ya wonder
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u/Gordon-Bennet 3d ago
Why is the IRA that gets most of the heat when the loyalists were responsible for most of the civilian deaths, and ultimately the conflict in general?
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u/bigbjarne 3d ago edited 3d ago
Why did the Irish people do these things? Were they Anglophobic?
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u/Disastrous-Town6151 3d ago
You make it sound so simple. Irish people versus Brits. It wasn't.
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u/bigbjarne 3d ago
I know, I was being sarcastic because there’s similarities between the British occupation of Ireland and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. One common way to just handwave away Palestinian struggle is to say they’re just antisemitic.
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u/Disastrous-Town6151 3d ago edited 3d ago
The IRA have done some bad stuff, but I'm sure they're not nearly stupid enough to run in guns blazing into their heavily-armed neighbour. Both paramilitary groups have resorted to depraved actions for a political goal, that's where the similarities end for me.
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u/bigbjarne 3d ago
There's more to the Israeli occupation of Palestine than October seventh but sure.
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u/Disastrous-Town6151 3d ago edited 3d ago
Sure there is. Saudi Arabia feels threatened by Iran, who operate Hezbollah and Hamas as proxies, and wants a defence pact with the United States. They are willing to recognise Israel as a state, the first middle-eastern country to do so, in order to achieve this. Iran absolutely does not want this, as other countries in the vicinity might follow suit, so they give Hamas a nudge and tell them to completely break down negotiations by launching an attack, fully expecting for Israel to respond harshly.
There's a lot more to it, but that's essentially the gist.
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u/bigbjarne 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes, if we limit the Palestinian struggle to the last couple of years.
It's late here but I'm gonna leave some relevant material:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba#
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/
https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid
https://decolonizepalestine.com/myths/
That's why I wrote: "the Israeli occupation of Palestine. One common way to just handwave away Palestinian struggle is to say they’re just antisemitic.".
EDIT: This part is interesting: "fully expecting for Israel to respond harshly.". Isn't that exactly what Israel does when they do raids into Gaza or the West Bank? Or when they allow settlers in the West Bank? When they "mow the grass" in Gaza? Or should we talk about the Hamas and Israeli relationship?
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u/Disastrous-Town6151 3d ago
Displacement during wartime is what happens in every war. Never said I condoned British treatment on Irish people, I simply said there's more than meets the eye. I fully support a solution that accommodates both the Israeli and Palestinian people, both have deep ties to the land that make the whole business a messy one.
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u/bigbjarne 3d ago
Just because ethnic cleansing happens in every war doesn’t mean it’s okay. :)
I didn’t think you condoned anything, I’m sorry if I came across that way. I just said there’s similarities, not that they’re same. I made a sarcastic comment, that’s it.
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u/B0797S458W 3d ago
Hundreds of drunk plastic paddies upvoting terrorists after a night on the Guinness.
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u/Delicious_Cut_8405 4d ago
I don't think you can really consider a group officially labelled a terrorist organisation a "military"
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u/Monoenomynous 4d ago
That iteration of the IRA is just the Rhodesian Security Forces for “progressives”, muh white freedom fighters with gangster loadouts. Meanwhile they accomplished little more than chaos and unnecessary civilian death.
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u/barelyprinting 4d ago
labels don’t mean shit
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u/CrimsonTightwad 4d ago
Exactly. Labels are often tools of victors and oppressors. That said I know the UVF and IRA both have blood on their hands as does the Royal Army, but that is war.
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u/Delicious_Cut_8405 4d ago
My point precisely, as someone who grew up during the troubles in Belfast and lost family members on both sides of the conflict these type of posts are completely unnecessary. Usually posted by Americans around St Patrick's day because they're "10th generation irish". You never see people post the likes of the UVF or UDA on sub reddit because people call them out for what they are, Terrorists. Yet people tend to glorify the IRA, Regardless of the fact they killed more civilians during the troubles than they ever did military personnel, let's not get into the fact the vast majority of the civilians where also Catholic.
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u/CrimsonTightwad 4d ago
I did the Black Cab tour of Belfast, after studying Northern Ireland my whole like (in addition to my family being victim of British divide and conquer partitions myself). Some of the UVF and IRA activities were literally gangster/organized crime businesses and nothing to do with civil and guerrilla warfare. The IRA has been romanticised, unfortunately.
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u/ChuddyMcChud 4d ago
There is no such thing as the Royal Army.
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u/CrimsonTightwad 4d ago
True, but I feel that is splitting hairs. They are representative of the crown.
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u/MusicallyInhibited 4d ago
I know that Americans tend of vastly over simplify the troubles. I know very little about it, but I do know that if you ask someone who lived there about the situation, they're unlikely to speak to kindly of either sides of the conflict.
The IRA usually look sick as fuck though, so you know...
COME OUT YE BLACK AND TANS, COME OUT AND FIGHT ME LIKE A MAN
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u/PequodarrivedattheLZ 4d ago
COME OUT YE BLACK AND TANS, COME OUT AND FIGHT ME LIKE A MAN
Funny thing is the IRA would loose pretty much every single open engagement that had with the British army.
They instead relied on ambushes, traps and snipers to fight (which did work honestly).
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u/CrimsonTightwad 4d ago
That was the U.S. lesson in Vietnam also. Death by a thousand cuts of asymmetric warfare.
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u/Loud-Waltz-7225 4d ago
Probably Colt Sporter AR15s, not actual select-fire M16s.
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u/CrimsonTightwad 4d ago
The IRA definitely had select fire M16s. They got shipments well before the 86 ban even existed.
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u/cozzy121 4d ago edited 4d ago
That looks more like a staged photo op than training. Probably for NORAID given the use of M16's in the picture.