I’m not a Nobel prize winning author, and I never will be one, but then I have a certain grasp of facts. So for instance, when a nobel laureate says that the 9/11 attack wasn’t as bad as the IRA’s multi-decade terror campaign, I have to point out this is an apple, that is an orange. One is a single attack carried out by a terror ogranization, the other is a totality of terror campaign. Why not compare the number killed by al-Qaida world-wide to those killed in a single IRA attack?
A better comparison would be the IRA’s multi-decade terror campaign, and al-Qaida’s roughly decade long terror campaign. And then you should also compare what the aims of the two groups are, and then I think it becomes pretty clear that in a real comparison, the IRA is/were pikers compared to al-Qaida, and if you throw in the Islamicist movement compared to the IRA, there is simply no comparison in terms of numbers killed, tortured, lives disrupted or ruined, international scope, or total opposition to everything Doris Lessing holds dear as a member of Western society. None.
