Ireland's forever wars Last November, Irish politics were convulsed by a triumphalist tweet from Brian Stanley, a Sinn Féin member of the Irish Dáil. He hailed the centenary of the Kilmichael ambush of 28 November 1920, where 16 Auxiliary members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) were killed by Republican forces during the Anglo-Irish War, and for good measure also celebrated the killing of 18 British soldiers at Warrenpoint by the Provisional IRA in August 1979. Stanley linked the incidents as “IRA operations that taught the British elite the cost of occupying Ireland”, and jeered that the latter were handicapped by being “slow learners”.