The Basque terrorist group ETA has often sought to imitate the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in recent years, both in its pursuit of a peace process, and in the military tactics it has used parallel to its political initiatives. The Madrid airport bombing that ruptured the group's nine-month ceasefire on December 30, 2006, was almost certainly modeled on the IRA's February 1996 Canary Wharf attack in London, where, with a massive explosion, Irish republicans dramatically ended an 18-month "cessation of hostilities" with the British after peace talks in Northern Ireland faltered.
The Canary Wharf bomb raises troubling issues for democrats, because it suggests that, in certain ...