Ok, here is the problem with applying the situation in Northern Ireland to the Falklands. Before Northern Ireland was colonized by English and Scottish protestants hundreds of years ago there were Irish Catholics living there already. When the first British settlers arrived on the Falklands, there were only penguins to greet them. Religion was clearly not going to be an issue, neither would territorial disputes simmer with the penguins for hundreds of years into the future - taking human lives in the process.
Hundreds of years after those Scottish protestants settled, you now have a community where half want to be Irish, and half want to be British. You cannot give Northern Ireland to the Irish Republic without disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of loyalist protestants. The Irish republicans cannot rightly claim to be disenfranchised under the current status quo because they have grown up as British citizens as did their grandparents and great grandparents before them. Also, the divide is not just a territorial one, but a religious one. And we all know only too well on this forum that common sense flies out of the window when religious zeal is brought into the equation.
As a Mancunian, I can recall my city being bombed by Irish republican terrorists. Nobody died thankfully, but the same cannot be said for all the various other bombings and clashes that sprung forth from the troubles. I am not standing up for the loyalists over the republicans. It makes no difference to me who is right or wrong. I am merely highlighting how the troubles in Northern Ireland are fierce and bloody, and fueled by centuries of sectarianism. To equate the colonizing of the vacant Falkland Islands with the turbulent and bloody history of Northern Ireland is as ridiculous as suggesting that penguins would swim to Manchester, or other UK cities, and carry out reprisal bomb attacks because we have deprived them of their Falklands habitat and thus dishonoured their penguin religion.
Cedars
