> > The IRA *do* have global reach - they may only plant bombs in Britain, but they have strong links to FARC in Equador, ETA in Spain, a whole raft of Middle-Eastern organisations, and possibly even Aum Shinko, the group that released nerve gas into the Tokyo subways a few years ago.
> >
> > All of these groups are part of an international "community", and trade resources and expertise between themselves. An IRA man, trained in Lybia by Spanish terrorists may find himself buying Czech explosives from a terror group in South America to bomb London, or to sell on to other terrorists.
> >
> > winter"3 Sinn Fein party officials recently arrested leaving FARC-controlled territory with traces of cocaine and Semtex on their clothes. They claimed to be reporters on holiday"mute
>
> I believe that "global reach" refers to targets, not communications. I agree that it is a significant problem, but as long as terrorists continue to act only within their home nation, it is a domestic problem, and unless that nation is incapable of dealing with the problem and asks for help with it, then no other nation has the right to butt in and help out. An analogy: If you have a poorly behaved child, and he breaks a lamp in your home, it is not a matter for the police--you deal with it yourself, unless the child has been doing this for years and years and you cannot deal with it and you ask for help--but until you ask for help, the police should not butt in. Now, if that same child starts breaking lamps in other people's homes, those other people may come to you asking for you to deal with the problem. If you do not, and this child continues to break lamps in other homes, possible even breaking into the homes to do so, then it is a matter for the police.
>
> I hope that this analogy isn't heavy with bias--I can't say for sure, but please let me know if you disagree with the analogy, or if you can think of good examples where this would not apply...
>
> Don "the Analogy" Monkey

It seems like a good analogy to me. The only thing I would add is that in this case the child is teaching his schoolfriends how to break stuff, and selling them catapults.

I agree that this is a domestic problem, and I think that if our government were to pull their thumbs out of their collective backside, they could deal with the problem as well as any other organisation, and probably better than most given that this is something we have been trying different strategies on for the last 80-odd years.

The point I was trying to make was more rhetorical than anything I suppose. I think that (especially in light of the global response to the NY bombing), governments should share information and resources against terrorism, even "local" terrorism, far more than they do at the moment. Well, information anyway: sharig "resources" could lead to all sorts of procedural and legal problems, unless there was a co-ordinated global anti-terrorist policy. But I doubt you'll ever get a large enough number of countries to agree on the difference between a "freedom fighter" and a "terrorist" to make that work.

On a semi-related note, The first thing GWB did that made me respect him as a politician (and bear in mind I rarely get to hear about American internal policy), was when he declared the IRA and its various factions and splinter groups to be terrorists, cutting out about 75% of their funding (my own estimate, assuming that Americans stopped donating when that happened) at a stroke.

winter"So long as people realise what the "ould cause" involves, anyway"mute