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Originally Posted by Shasown
We are talking South Africa of the 60's pmsl. Mandela wasnt found fuilty of murder, or conspiracy to cause murder, he was found guilty of charges of sabotage and also plotting to cause the invasion of South Africa.(the equivalent of treason). Leading workers on an illegal strike and being a member of the ANC.
McGuinness on the other hand was found guilty of being in possession of a very large amount of explosives and a few thousand rounds of ammunition in the irish Republic. If Mandela had of been caught with that lot back in South Africa when he was arrested he would have been hung, no ifs or buts.
And the IRA amongst others sent people to Liba, the Lebanon, they even trained alongside Hezbollah.
McGuinness was responsible for a lot of deaths, believe me. He is no folk hero. Now it is politically expedient to deal with him in the political arena. Although being a murderous Ba**ard, like Adams he had the sense to realise the way to acheive their aims either partially or in full was not through bomb and bullet but through the ballet box.
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Because he wasn't actually tried for murder, which some wanted to happen at the time. He was willing to fight by means of physical force, just like McGuinness. It's naive to think that he would have become the pacifist had he been entrenched in warfare like his comrades at the time, in an organization that he created and trained. He never critized the path they had taken - in actual fact he acknowledge that an aggressive stance was needed.