Fight for Ireland?

Michael D would lead us into battle!

These wanna be 'RA types are only good for licensing hard working drug dealers and beating women.

I'm guessing you don't really do Irish history ! We have been invaded, and planted 4 times. And ,yes, we finally rebelled. Many men took up arms, and women too. Including my grand parents. If it happens again I probably would in a backseat way , as I can't really walk and definitely not run :(

I would like to think I would fight. But have never been tested in that regard so no idea if I could actually kill someone. The reality of doing it is frightening. But if I was literally defending my home and family I think I would find the nerve.

It's a generalisation but not racism please stop making everything about race.

The Irish fishermen weren't afraid to stand up to the Russian's so just give all the guns to them.

Reminds me of the bit in Angela's Ashes where the father would come home drunk in the middle of the night and get the children up and make them promise to fight for Ireland

He would take Putin on man to man in a poetry battle!

Ah fcuk it

So long as nobody took my pint while I was gone, shur t'would probably only take a few minutes anyway.

I'd like to think I would, but that is something that I think a lot of Irish people would say at first. We've never really faced the reality of war or been in the position of defending against a foreign army of this magnitude. And before people start bringing up Northern Ireland or British Rule, the Russians are a different kettle of fish I think. We'd be completely overwhelmed and outmatched by the Russian military in a conventional war, so at best we'd have to fight a guerrilla war against them and hope that our European neighbors and perhaps the Americans would lend a helping hand. We'd lose against Russia on our own but I suppose those who fought in the War for Independence also had to face that possibility 100 years ago.

You seem to be assuming new Irish = non white. The vast majority of new Irish are of Eastern European heritage. White people.

What would I fight with ? I don’t think the baseball bat, Hurley and a set of steak knives will do much damage..

does Ireland have a cache of weapons on reserve that they could hand out to civilians in a time of war ? If so yeah, I’d rather be dead and having gave it a go then living under some Russian tyranny… but …

Knowing this poxy country we’d probably not have enough to weapons for our armed forces…let alone to arm civilians to defend themselves, their loved ones and their country.

but hey, there is probably some fûcktard sitting somewhere right now with a calculator and a thesaurus about to get wordy and creative as to why we should be donating more in overseas aid instead of looking to see how we ‘might’ mobilise some sort of coordinated mobile defence…if it came to that…..

Interestingly…

An additional €140 million has been allocated to the ODA budget, reaching over €1billion for the first time… just last year..

cant defend ourselves but we can give away a billion Euros with a big smug satisfied grin…. Mad kip..

with WW3, Covid, everything else…. We say goodbye to one billion euros…

is it worth fighting for ? Maybe, I’ll go get the steak knives set..

The Ukrainian people or fighting for the existence of their country, I'd like to think most people would fight under those circumstances, but Putin is right, we have all gone soft in the West. Looking at the defiance of the Ukrainian government refusing to leave Kiev, and their ministers arming themselves ready to fight to the death, I can't help comparing them to our gobshites in the Dail, can you imagine Meatball Martin or Leo brandishing a AK47 vowing to fight to the end? They'd have left for the safety of the US weeks ago, with their only worry being if occupation means their pensions won't be honoured.

It wasn't always this way in Ireland though, its only a century ago that the population took on the biggest empire in the world, armed only with a handful of guns and determination, and managed to drive them out (well apart from NI)

i said to myself ..

” a quick google of Irish defence assets and capabilities will show me we don’t have enough and are under resourced “

“Ammunition.

The Defence Forces of Ireland have limited, low and no ammunition in some cases. With training restrictions in place on a number of weapons over the last few years. Leading to a training minus and a indefectibility throughout the Defence Forces.

The Irish army personal now only complete an annual rifle table firing 40 rounds of ammunition once a year. Comparatively the British army soldiers were given 200 rounds annually to practice back in 1910.

With the pace of warfare and combat today it is easy to deduce that Units need to store ammunition, for their weapons and not have to collect it from a central location a great distance away. This leads to unnecessary long delays in any response and increased pressure on Units with weapons but no ammunition.

A simple system could be put in place.”

Ireland - one of the so called richest countries in the world with a less than token military. When anyone suggests doing something about this situation, arguments rolled out include "ah shur we'd lose any conflict anyway so why bother". Or talking about how there are plenty of NATO countries between us and the likes of Russia so we'll be grand. Everyone loves the Irish -ole ole ole!

We are a half arsed, kick the can down the road country. Anytime the government announces that it will do something by a particular date, do they ever manage to meet their target.

Looking at the footage of the citizens in Ukraine preparing today was a real eye opener. The former president and members of Parliament carrying guns. People making molotov cocktails. Eastern Europeans (every nationality, not just Ukrainians) have a grim toughness, national pride and hands on attitude that we don't have.

Sure it will never happen, we don’t have any enemies… that’s been our attitude ..

you plan and prepare for the worst case scenario…

we don’t plan, we don’t prepare.

Proper planning prevents pïss poor performance…. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail……

those analogies have been around for a long time but Ireland… our analogy….”ahhh sure, be grand”…” sure we have xxxxxx so we’ll forget about what we might need to be safe and give away $$$$$$$$”…

8751 active personnel and I can’t be arsed looking up what percentage are deployed on peacekeeping duty elsewhere.

8751 trained personnel to defend a country of 5 million people and 70,274 km²

.. marvellous.

Our defence forces wouldn’t get close to filling Hill 16…. When you read it in those terms….

I found it very humbling watching the Ukrainians, most of which without basic training stepping up to the mark to fight. Takes a lot of guts considering what they are up against. They're not fighting someone remotely on the same level militarily.

Its an interesting question. I'd like to think I would do the same for ireland. But in Irelands case if fought against a military as sophisticated as Russia, it would be hopeless and you'd have to figure that you'd rather die than be occupied by them.

It really does show how brave the men and women of 1916, the PIRA etc were. Sometimes we take it for granted, we should be more grateful to them.