In the UK ( I write that only becuase I think you may reside in the Antipodies ((or is it *my* antipodies, rather the *THE* antipodies?)))
we spent 30+ years dealing with the IRA blowing up women and children along with "actionable" targts such as those annoying solider types doing their duty.
3,500 dead, more than 15,000 injured to bombs, guns and grenades. It certainly wasn't very nice even here on the mainland. I was in Liverpool the night they tried to blow the gas storage tanks next to the block of flats, which would have dramatically increased the casualty figures had it worked. It certainly scared my mother a lot, and we were the other side of the city.
We had internment once due to the Troubles. There were demonstrations, riots and hunger strikes. Internment went away.
For a reason which I don't understand at all during all that craziness, during the period when the IRA dropped motar bombs on the prime ministers house while he was in it, when a shopping centre was blown up and far too many children died horribly, when a hotel became a national point of pride because it got blown up SO OFTEN (!) - no one ever made coronors inquests which could damage government image secret.
No one ever was arrested for demonstraing closer than 1,000 meters in front of the house of parliment that I pay for and vote for, and no one was convicted in court without a jury and without knowing who accused them and what the evidence was that was used to accuse them.
So why is it different now? The risk then - certainly to the average UK person in the street, was significantly higher than it is today. To the best of my knowledge, a muslin has never tried to take my life. But I know for a fact, becuase I still have the scars to prove it, that I was kicked unconcious when I was a kid for wearing an orange tee-shirt in the wrong bit of liverpool on the wrong day. And my scout hut got evactuated twice in three years by armed police because the doss house next door to it was an IRA safe house but it's never happned to me at least that I've had muslin/hindu/jedi extremists living next door to me.
The IRA had equally few morals - probably a lot less. Mrs Steve's father was one of the first on the scene when one of his troop was snatched and tortured to death in the mid 1970's in northern Ireland. I'm not sure what the word that should be used to describe someone who cuts a human being apart with an ocy-aceletene torch before a shot to the back of the head finishes it, but I dont think its a nice one, and I think "Moral" probably isn't it. And I don't think they were playing by any sort of rules.
And yet..... and yet.
And yet none of this seems to have really happened anymore. Somehow people - at least those not directly affected by it - forget that this madness, this saveragery, has happened before. And no one ever made it illegal for me to photograph a police officer breaking the law.
maybe I am a very cynical man indeed, but there is a part of me that says it is very convinient that these wretched people blowing themselves up. It certainly makes it easier to get through legislation that would otherwise have been impossible...
Steve