For those wondering why so many of us Americans are so invested in Ireland, Ireland is an integral component of the founding mythos of the American Republic (much like England and Scotland). So much so, its memorialized in our own civil war when two ethnic Irish brigades clashed at the
Battle of Fredericksburg, one fighting for the State of Georgia and the other for the United States.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=wAQSEoBp-F0
It all underscores a foundational issue that I think people in the home Islands really do not understand. The Americans do not see Great Britain and Ireland as some foreign island chain alien to them. They see it as their mythical Elysium. The godhead from which their civilization sprang. The place they came from, where the bones of their ancestors lay in honored repose.
To Americans, the video of an Irishman being attacked by a muslim on the streets of Ireland is not seen as a foreign conflict. Its seen as a personal attack.