It was always messy, wars always are, anyone thinking otherwise is a naive fool.
Interesting remark. Armed nationalist organisations always referred to the Troubles as a “war”. UK governments always steadfastly refused to see it as such, dismissing it as nothing more than criminal activity by terrorists, hence for example the Maze Prison hunger strikes.
It now seems that the Troubles are indeed widely seen by people both sides of the debate as having been a war.
Presumably this made British soldiers, for example, perfectly legitimate targets ?
(For the record …….. personally while hugely sympathetic to the nationalist cause I could not support the armed struggle. While I fully accept that armed insurrection can in extreme circumstances where all other political avenues have been fully exhausted be totally justified, the existing conditions in NI did not justify it imo. Besides even if the existing conditions did justify it the violence went far beyond legitimate military targets.)