September 29, 2001

10:21 AM

After al-Qaeda?Since the "battle against terrorism will be fought worldwide", is it going to target, among others, the groups in Northern Ireland, ETA, Kach and Kahane Chai(!)? Also, it's notable there has been no mention of the long history of financing and arms for the IRA and such that emanates from the US.
posted by mmarcos (10 comments total)

I think ultimately the answer is more or less "yes". Not necessarily publicly or with the same degree of fervor, but the effect will be the same. One of the things which is going to happen is a world-wide crack down on the banking system to really prevent money laundering and anonymous movement of cash. That will hurt all those movements.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:49 AM on September 29, 2001

In his address to Congress, President Bush stated: "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."

I would argue that neither ETA or the IRA could be considered to have "global reach" as they only conduct attacks within their respective countries. I think the scope of this operation is well defined to organizations that can target the United States. Internal terrorism groups have been, and will continue to be an national law enforcement problem in may contries, not cause for international action.
posted by venegas at 10:53 AM on September 29, 2001

address to Congress that is....
posted by venegas at 10:55 AM on September 29, 2001

Wasn't the mission statement parsed carefully to include terrorist organizations with "a global reach." None of these groups has that kind of capability, or extends their terror on a worldwide basis.
posted by NoMoreLSAT at 10:59 AM on September 29, 2001

OK, point about global reach taken, still, isn't it cynical for the US govt to mouth off about the financing of terrorism while the IRA (whether a global or local terrorist group) was and is financed and armed in great part by US parties?
posted by mmarcos at 11:06 AM on September 29, 2001

The IRA has reportedly been training the FARC in Colombia. Whether you count them as Marxist guerillas, a drug cartel, or terrorists, they're pretty nasty all around.

Don't know about ETA, Zapatistas, or others.
posted by jaek at 11:33 AM on September 29, 2001

I have to agree with venegas. Internal groups that exclusively work internally are not the targets for this initiative.
posted by Wet Wednesday at 11:47 AM on September 29, 2001

So the attack on the WTC would have been OK if it was just done by an internal terrorist group(timothy mcviegh type), which just happened to be funded and trained by some rich foreigners?
posted by Iax at 2:41 AM on September 30, 2001

If the IRA is financed by outside forces, and especially if it's active in Colombia, it is an international terrorist group. The US should work hard to shut down all IRA financing and to imprison anyone (especially any American) contributing to the IRA.
posted by pracowity at 2:55 AM on September 30, 2001

The Russian government has already announced that they will be treating Chechen rebels as terrorists. Essentially this War on Terrorism does give carte blanche to any government trying to put down any violent dissident forces. I don't think any of us particularly have a right to be surprised about it.

Now if only parts of this list didn't read like pages out of the script to "Life of Brian".
posted by ilsa at 1:07 PM on September 30, 2001