Editorial: The main problem for a veterans commissioner in Northern Ireland is that ex military here do not get the protection they do in Great Britain

The resignation of Danny Kinahan as Northern Ireland Veterans’ Commissioner is yet another blow on legacy.

What is often called the legacy of the Troubles is something that we have begun to call the legacy of terrorism. Otherwise, the term has been used in a way that ultimately just ends up blaming the UK state for the Troubles, which was in fact a story of republican led murder and mayhem. This is not to say that republicans were the only element in the long history of conflict and division in Ulster, of course not. But it is to say that most civil rights demands had been met by 1969 and they were almost entirely so by 1972.

The futility of violence was by then apparent to the Official IRA but not to the Provisional IRA, who continued bombing and killing for another 25 years.

This column does not have space to address all of the outrageous things that are still happening on legacy, and might well continue under the new legacy body, of an utter imbalance in terms of investigations into the past, that almost evenly look at state wrongdoing when 90% of killings were by terrorists, and perhaps 98%+ of all illegal killings (given that the great bulk of state killings were legal). In any event we and others have rehearsed such points countless times.

Even setting aside the massive problem of the handling of historic investigations to date, there is the fundamental issue of respect for our veterans who are still alive, and support for them.

The concept is easy in the United States, where veterans are venerated and given special treatment in a range of ways, and it is relatively easy in the rest of the UK. But the military covenant does not properly apply here, because nationalists object to it.​

Mr Kinahan says veterans “do not enjoy the same protections as their counterparts in Great Britain”. He has done his best, but the lacking framework of protections is the core problem.