Weird. I posted a reply at lunchtime, but now it's gone. Oh well.Pensioner wrote: The problem with your attitude is that when we Brits in Ireland had the same mindset and we interned not only the guilty but the innocent as well. That's when the shit really hit the fan. it put troops on the ground lives in danger. Some area's in the Northern Ireland before interment we had a good relationship with the Catholics but after that we had next to zero. We alienated the moderate Republican who wanted a united Ireland but did not support in anyway terrorism. Good intelligence is the key in defeating terrorism and the rule of law must be applied.
Anyway, the truth is that the Brits in Ireland did not have the "same mindset" in Ireland as we do in Afghanistan and Iraq. We entered both countries to take down terrorists and tyrants, build a democracy and free the people from tyranny. Our intention is to leave as soon as that mission is accomplished and then do business with our new friends, to the mutual benefit of all.
The "mindset" of the English in Ireland has been to subjugate or destroy the Irish people and their culture through more than 800 years of imperialistic invasion, occupation and genocide. When the Irish could not simply be conquered and exterminated, the British government began a long-term program of "breeding them out" by shipping tens of thousands of Protestants over from England and Scotland to occupy Northern Ireland, seize the lands and grant them to the illegal immigrants and dilute the Irish people and culture through colonization. That's been Britain's policy for hundreds of years, and its intent is to seize the assets of Ireland for itself while starving the Irish to death by the millions during the Potato Famine(s) where Britain not only shipped every bit of food out of Ireland (just like Stalin did to Ukraine in 1933) but refused to send relief supplies to people who were eating grass to try to survive.
Britain's "mindset" in Ireland has been racist, arrogant, imperialistic and genocidal from the very beginning, so your comparison is utter nonsense.