Lefty,
I hardly know where to start… you’ve provided an interesting and provoking perspective… It’s neither right nor wrong depending on your point of view… and yes, it’s long, but you’ve every right to post it. Having said that, if you want to pull the pin on a literary grenade with a post like yours and roll it down the bar, it’s probably best to do it in as few words as possible. Perhaps it’s the devil you know rather than the one you don’t. In any event, equating the conflict in North Ireland to the conflict in the Middle and Near East is far too naïve even for an Irishman.
I think the following best describes your post… The Internet – “Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice -- a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.” Wendy Kaminer, Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials
Back to your analogy… True, you’re just as dead if blown up by an IRA bomb as you would be if blown up by an al-Qaeda IED, and yes, there are thugs in every society ready to beat you senseless without any meaningful and enforced rules of law… However, there’s a big difference in the motivation behind the acts of terror in Ireland and those committed in the name of Allah.
There are three important points your perspective appears to be missing… and these are likely the more fundamental differences between the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland and conflict in the Middle East… They are the level of education or the lack thereof, the difference between the Judeo-Christian beliefs and that of Islam being practiced today, and the fact that the Muslims are taught by the Koran that they must conquer the world. No mater how much Guinness Stout you can swill, the Irish had no such plans regardless of their Catholic or Protestant upbringing, then or now…
The Islamic population of the Middle East is predominantly poor and uneducated. The Mullahs like it that way and hate for the infidels is taught from birth… That makes them very gullible and easily swayed to commit horrific acts of jihadic terror at the behest of the Mullahs and in the name of Allah.
Leon Uris put it best in his book, The Haj – 1984. “So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world… And all of us against the infidel.”
Accordingly, in pretending to understand the fundamental motivation for the problems the world faces in the Middle East by drawing parallels with the Irish conflict, you draw a conclusion that is IMHO, very far fetched… Again, that’s just my humble opinion… Again, you draw on the devil you know…
Islamoterrorists use their religious upbringing and way of life as their sole rationale for committing acts of terror against the western world of non-believers in general, the big Satan - the USA, the UK, and with special malice to the little Satan - Israel.
The Koran is very clear about all this… You are either a believer in the ways of Allah - A Muslim, or you are an infidel with no rights who must be forced to pay a special tax (jizyah), which is traditionally levied once a year, or be put to the sword and killed! There is no middle ground. Moreover, calling for the defeat of the Western world’s free way of life by demanding the rule of Sharia law be imposed on all, only starts turning the clock back a millennium.
If you want some history and learned writings that place the situation with radical jihadist Islam in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and the world in perspective, check out the following links. Most of this can be a brutal and long read for those who’ve suffer from a politically correct, liberal education devoid of fact and un-revised history. For the rest of us, a lot of it is just plain scary… Just search on “Islam” and “Islam Churchill” at the following
URL Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!! You need to

or
There’s also another document worth reading at:
Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!! You need to

or

There’s so much more to read.
You’re also coming out of deep left field by saying the United States will be safer with President Obama in the White House than it was with President Bush and Cheney… That’s a loaded statement laced with Bush Derangement Syndrome, and one that requires a more scholarly understanding of history than saying the US is repeating it by going into Iraq and Afghanistan for any reason…
Your fellow countrymen have a history of being in Iraq and Afghanistan… Do a little reading… They were there before WWI. In a sense, the US is making history in Iraq by spending a lot of time and blood building a democracy… something no other nation has ever done…
Obama hasn’t the slightest understanding of the Marines that guard him, their history, or the Marine Corps Hymn… His on- or off-TOTUS comments made that clear when he said to the people of Turkey "Let me say this as clearly as I can: the United States is not and will never be at war and with Islam." While that may be his plan, he failed to recognize the historical fact that the first war the United States fought in it’s early infancy as a new nation, was a war against Islam in the form of the Barbary Pirates on “the shores of Tripoli.” That kept them and the rest of us in the world free of piracy on the high seas for over 200 years.
The actions President Bush took have kept the people of the United States free of further attacks by the islamoterroists. That’s a fact… So far all we’ve seen of President Obama at home and on the world stage is a lot of kowtowing and glad-handing with thugs, a lot of blame America, but not me… and that has left the people of the United States standing there open kimono… It’s difficult at best to see where any of this has made life safer for the people of the United States.
Finally, as provoking as it might be, your post rather resembles the tale of Snow White... Unfortunately, unlike that fairy tale, there is no happy ending as the realty of the real world is very different... If we do not answer the fundamental terror there at our doorstep with sufficient force, it will come into our homes and we will be lost… The world will continue to encounter terrorist acts from radical Islam until it is crushed…
It’s not just because we are Americans, British, Irish, Israelis, or any other Western nation... It’s because we are infidels to them and we represent a threat to their goal of imposing Islam the will of Allah over the rest of the world...
Michael
(Tks. Pete for the help, typo and English….. )