An article by Marie Colvin of the Times Online describing the failed surrender of the Tamil Tigers rings true. At least in part. Her story is that the Tiger leadership attempted to surrender, but were either accidentally or treacherously gunned down by the Sri Lankan security forces. Colvin was in touch with the Tiger leadershp for much of the siege by satellite phone.
“We are putting down our arms,” he told me late last Sunday night by satellite phone from the tiny slip of jungle and beach on the northeast coast of Sri Lanka where the Tigers had been making their last stand. I could hear machinegun fire in the background as he continued coolly: “We are looking for a guarantee of security from the Obama administration and the British government. Is there a guarantee of security?”
There was none. So Colvin attempted to set one up. She approached the UN representative to Sri Lanka to arrange for a safe conduct pass. The UN envoy, Vijay Nambiar, received assurances from Sri Lankan officials that the Tigers simply had to “wave the white flag high” and they would be received safely. What the Tigers received was something else.
Through highly placed British and American officials I had established contact with the UN special envoy in Colombo, Vijay Nambiar, chief of staff to Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general. I had passed on the Tigers’ conditions for surrender, which he had said he would relay to the Sri Lankan government. … Once more, the UN 24-hour control centre in New York patched me through to Nambiar in Colombo, where it was 5.30am on Monday. I woke him up.
I told him the Tigers had laid down their arms. He said he had been assured by Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan president, that Nadesan and Puleedevan would be safe in surrendering. All they had to do was “hoist a white flag high”, he said. I asked Nambiar if he should not go north to witness the surrender. He said no, that would not be necessary: the president’s assurances were enough.
However, the Sri Lankan President might have wanted to assure something else. A Sri Lanakan Tamil MP who was on the phone with the Tiger leadership up to the moment they stepped out with the white flag takes up the tale.
“We are ready,” Nadesan told him. “I’m going to walk out and hoist the white flag.”
“I told him: ‘Hoist it high, brother – they need to see it. I will see you in the evening’,” said Chandra Nehru.
A Tamil who was in a group that managed to escape the killing zone described what happened. This source, who later spoke to an aid worker, said Nadesan and Puleedevan walked towards Sri Lankan army lines with a white flag in a group of about a dozen men and women. He said the army started firing machineguns at them.
Nadesan’s wife, a Sinhalese, yelled in Sinhala at the soldiers: “He is trying to surrender and you are shooting him.” She was also shot down.
After the first pictures of Tiger leader Prabhakaran’s corpse were released, I noticed the immaculate condition of his uniform; the lack of a disguise, his vanity dogtags, his newly shaven face and the headcloth covering what might have been a wound to the head. It was not the garb of a man who had intended to sneak out unnoticed from a tight encirclement in an ambulance, a public story which was preposterous anyway. Here was a man, I thought, who strode out in his best pressed uniform hoping to salvage his life from the wreckage of his insurgency through diplomacy. Tens of thousands had been sent to their deaths; including 6,000 Sri Lankan soldiers in the last phases of the battle. Yet the puppet masters always see themselves apart from the puppets. But Prabhakaran didn’t look like a man who had been machine-gunned as part of a larger group in the manner described. No mud stains from a sudden going to ground; no blood from those who had fallen around him. Perhaps Prabhakaran died separately from the group described by the the Sri Lankan MP. Perhaps the Sri Lankan MP’s account isn’t accurate either. Maybe there was no group, no machine-gunning, just an arrest after the surrender and bullet to the side of the head. After all, the the Sri Lankans would want to positively identify the Tiger leadership first before putting the period on the long and bloody tale. Machine-gunning a group would be an inefficient way to end it. Perhaps the only thing we can descry, through the bodyguard of lies, is the verity of self-interest.
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Will we ever know the truth? That is always said to be the “first casualty of war”. Despite all the noises the UN is making, my guess is that the current Sri Lankan leaders will never be seriously accused of anything. The UN deals with whoever is in power, whoever they may be. There will be laughing, smiles and posed handshakes after a decent interval as the surviving puppeteers gather up their strings. If I was to guess, everyone, including Prabhakaran and the UN envoy, knew how this would end. The “don’t bother to attend the surrender” was not only a warning to the diplomats, but an opportunity for them not to know.
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52 Comments
1. RaviT:Yes, this is a real epistemological problem–I don’t think we can ever be confident as to what happened. Kudos to GoSL on destroying the LTTE, but let’s open up those Tamil internment camps to some NGO access.
May 23, 2009 - 8:45 pm 2. whiskey:Eric Ambler wrote of the same thing in the Night-Comers, also known as State of Siege.
May 23, 2009 - 8:49 pm 3. wretchard:This is pure speculation on my part, but the final nail in Prabhakaran’s coffin was the insistence, by some in the international community, for a negotiated settlement. Earlier, the Western diplomats had expressed worries that the Tigers would commit suicide, leaving no one to negotiate with. The Sri Lankans knew that if the Tiger leadership survived, even in captivity, then there would be pressure from the International Community to grant Prabhakaran some sort of status. The Tigers themselves must have apprehended the danger at the last. Hence the significance of these paragraphs from Colvin’s dispatch, detailing the Tiger’s climbdown from a demand to negotiate.
The Tigers were “unstatusing” themselves in the last hours. No more pictures, no more political demands. They had run out of hope. Now they were playing for their lives. They were dropping all pretense to authority having realized belatedly that the Sri Lankans could not afford to have them survive as viable political figures. But by then, I think, it was too late.
May 23, 2009 - 9:05 pm 4. Josh:Doesn’t the previous Belmont post, “Sri Lankan Bad Example”, pretty much tell the same story?
May 23, 2009 - 9:23 pm 5. Batman:What would the world say if this were Israel and Hamas or Israel and Hezbollah? When Syria does it there is silence. When Jordan does it there is silence. When Sri Lanka does it there is muted mumbling for a short time followed by silence.
May 23, 2009 - 9:39 pm 6. RaviT:Wretchard,
May 23, 2009 - 9:40 pm 7. Mike Sylwester:While I fully support the elimination of the LTTE, I am getting an increasingly sour feeling in my stomach about what’s going on in these internment camps–please stay on this–human nature being what it is, there is good reason to fear what will come of the internment of 100’s of thousands. . . .
I too thought the picture looked like he had been shot point-blank in the forehead.
And I thought the ambulance story was preposterous. There is no way anyone could have imagined he could escape the surrounded area by hiding in an amubulance.
May 23, 2009 - 9:51 pm 8. MG:So the Tamil Tiger leadership experience the same outcome they inflicted upon countless innocents.
I don’t much care whether or not the Sri Lanka gov’t engaged in subterfuge. Regardless, surrendering does not guarantee survival — merely that there could be due process prior to execution. Since he was in uniform, he could be afforded a court martial. It would consist of:
Affirmative identification of the individual.
Reading of the charges.
Pronouncement of sentence.
Execution of sentence.
Probably should take all of one minute.
They should have accepted the offer of a political process, and they should have done it two years ago.
May 23, 2009 - 10:01 pm 9. wretchard:In the months following the defeat of the Japanese in the Philippines, the US Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) was busy finding collaborators, Japanese agents and those sorts of people. Getting arrested by the CIC was the best thing that could happen to a collaborator or informer because at all events, the CIC guys wouldn’t kill you. But as you can well imagine, a lot of the people who had worked as informers for the Japanese, who had worn the bag with the eyeholes over their head while they pointed out guerillas who were savagely killed and tortured by the Imperial Japanese forces were hunted down ruthlessly by those Filipino underground men with scores to settle. I suspect much the same thing happened in Europe, both judicially and extra-judicially. The judicial story is well known. High ranking Nazis were hanged, as were the Japanese. Yamashita was hanged in Los Banos, Laguna. It turned out that Yamashita wasn’t really responsible for the Battle of Manila. That was a Japanese Navy operation. But MacArthur had him hanged anyway, some say because someone had to go to gallows for Bataan and the Death March, even if Homma was responsible. Yamashita was available and so to hangman he went.
So the balance of probability is that the camps are being combed by the Sri Lankan equivalent of the CIC, though probably less restrained. There will be precious little in the way of “human rights” for the ex-Tigers trying to pass themselves off, I am afraid. Nor will there be any shortage of innocents unjustly accused. In the immediate aftermath of a war, passions run high. Killing, so recently licit, has not yet become fully illicit again. That will take a while. It will be drumhead justice, with neither a drum nor much formal justice anywhere in evidence.
May 23, 2009 - 10:18 pm 10. NahnCee:People want to surrender to the Brits or the Americans. I wonder when (if we haven’t already) we will institute a “kill them in the field” policy given the enormous hassle that Gitmo has become.
I also wonder when every single person in the whole entire world will become fed up with the total and lethal incompetence of the United Nations.
May 23, 2009 - 10:39 pm 11. Daran:Whether intentional or not, this outcome should make the reconciliation process a lot smoother (hopefully the government is so inclined).
May 23, 2009 - 10:44 pm 12. downtowndubai:hey
jeeeez RAVI T were ya screamin your lungs out for human rights watchers and NGOs to keep the peace when the indian forces stormed the shikh golden temple or formed death squads after the assination of mrs Ghandi ???? crickets….silence…nada.
didn’t figure so.
drop the faux humanist concern, pal. indians have had their paws in the internal drama of sri lanka for decades. time for the ”home team” to dole out just desserts and maybe shave the heads of many indian agents and colabos.
the dram of ceylon has to be the most prolific example of indian foreign policy landing on its ass since FIJI. the only thing that kept your commando ”balck cats’ at bay were mossad ”consultants” for the GOSL. you can take that to the bank…
May 23, 2009 - 11:12 pm 13. Beverly:Speaking of extra-judicial score-settling after the second World War, I remember Andy Rooney, himself a veteran of the liberation of Paris, remarking that some 4,000 people were shot by Frenchmen taking revenge on collaborators, in just the first week after Paris was liberated.
Just one example.
May 23, 2009 - 11:18 pm 14. wretchard:The BBC looks at the anatomy of a defeat or the architecture of victory, whichever term you prefer.
It took three years, a huge number of casualties, vast amounts of money and a grinding assault that combined splitting the tigers, destroying their supply routes and forcing them into a war of maneuver, for which they were ill-prepared. “The capture of Paranthan forced the rebels to withdraw from the strategically important Elephant Pass, a small land bridge that connects northern Jaffna peninsula with the rest of the country.” The Tamils fell from their apogee to a nadir in 3 years. Their strength in 2006 may have misled them into thinking they could duke it out with the more powerful Sri Lankan government.
But perhaps the one thing the Tigers did not count on was Colombo’s willingness to fight pre-Cold War style, with no ambiguity, no regard for the media and political correctness.
May 23, 2009 - 11:28 pm 15. Nomenklatura:“But perhaps the one thing the Tigers did not count on was Colombo’s willingness to fight pre-Cold War style, with no ambiguity, no regard for the media and political correctness.”
Or perhaps the key development here was the support the government in Colombo received, and decided it could rely on, from China.
The impact of China’s emergence as a credible ‘great power’ sponsor, openly unrestrained by and dismissive of politically correctness, appears attractive in this instance. In that respect the despicable Tigers were a well chosen initial victim. It’s less clear where this may lead us in the future.
May 24, 2009 - 12:41 am 16. wretchard:Although I not entirely sure the facts as reported are accurate, the Sri Lankan civil war may turn out to be a textbook example of how to turn favorable position into a fiasco. The West should have been on the winning side, and thus able to moderate the blows that are descending upon the unfortunate ordinary Tamils now. But the West appears to have been seized by fecklessness amounting to madness; a kind of peacenikism run amuck that has had catastrophic consequences not only for Western diplomacy but for the Tamils themselves; a more perfect demonstration of the destructive stupidity of UN-ism and NGO-ism would be hard to find. Now it seems that not only has China managed to insert itself into the scene, it has managed to demonstrate forcibly how stupid it is to take Western advice.
On an another level, I almost laughed at reading how the Tigers in their extremity would settle for nothing less than a guarantee of safety from the Gringo man: the US and Britain. They didn’t want a guarantee from the UN; nor the European Union, nor the NGOs nor any pillar of the enlightened so-called International Community. They wanted the protection of the US and Britain. Because when you come right down to it, they were more certain of a fair shake from these reviled powers than from anyone else.
I think it is highly probable that Jihadis the world over if captured, would overwhelmingly choose — nay beg — to be held in US or British custody rather than put their trust in the gentle ministrations of their co-religionists in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. If you showed them the Bush memos, they would agree to be treated thus with such haste as to be unseemly, when the alternative is incarceration in some Muslim country. We’ve been fed such a load of drivel by the Left that we sometimes forget that almost nobody would choose to live or trust in a country they are fond of and that practically any sane person would prefer to take their chances in the places the Left hates the most.
May 24, 2009 - 3:33 am 17. Herb:Mr. Fernandez: “guarantee of safety from the Gringo man”
Our writ doesnt go there. The Chinese do. UN and NGO’s dont have a writ. To paraphrase Mao, the writ grows from the barrel of the gun. The Brits sent a Dip. No writ. We chastened the SL Govt with Human Rights Counseling. No writ. The ChiComs sent guns, they have a writ.
May 24, 2009 - 5:31 am 18. RC Power:NahnCee’s two concise points are indeed a probable result, assuming the object is to win rather then prolong suffering of innocents.
May 24, 2009 - 5:34 am 19. The View from Alexandria:[...] 24, 2009 by philo Wretchard, writing about the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, says down in the comments something that I think [...]
May 24, 2009 - 5:52 am 20. JFSanders:Ding, ding, ding! WE HAAAVE A WINNER!
Herb @17!
And you know what? If you are a civilian minority and you support a terrorist organization to provide you with your “lost” rights. Then you deserve the same punishment as the terror org. The punishment is the same for conspiracy to commit murder as for the actual murderer.
Gandhi got rights for his people without resorting to terror. Washington got rights for his people by use of violence without terror tactics. Bolivar got rights for his country without terror generally speaking. The difference between those and these is one of HONOR AND MORALITY. Do it from a position of correctness or suffer the doom.
May 24, 2009 - 5:54 am 21. Lifeofthemind:Before checking out the BC I was just looking at Earl Ziemke’s “Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East.” Everyone wants to surrender to the British or Americans. Many are disappointed.
One thing is certain from the video, Prabhakaran did not starve to death.
Beverly,
May 24, 2009 - 6:06 am 22. E. Nigma:You may be interested in this on the Resistance and Collaboration in France.
http://nypl.org/research/calendar/exhib/hssl/hsslexhibdesc.cfm?id=492
“Cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war!”
Thus it has tragically always been. However most wars begin, they seem to end with more cruelty and savagery than ever imagined when they begin. And they always begin with the highest of hopes, or course. And end with barbaric tragedy. The American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian war, which led right into WWI, then into WWII, Viet Nam, the Gulf War (Desert Storm) led into OIF, the Russian campaign in Afghanistan in the ’80’s and then against the Chechens since, well, forever (at least since Tolstoy was a young man in the army).
In a manner of observation, how else could it have ended? After the terrorism and cruely of the LTTE (regardless of the rightness or wrongness of their cause), did they really think they were going to get away with it? To quote Clint Eastwood,”You didn’t think we were going to just let you walk out of here, did you?” With the “we” part being Smith and Wesson, and Clint.
May 24, 2009 - 6:54 am 23. john lynch:Well, WTF DIDN’T THEY DO IT SOONER INSTEAD OF HIDING BEHIND ALL THOSE INNOCENT PEOPLE? If they actually cared about the Tamil people, why did they kill so many of them?
They had plenty of time to surrender in the months before this. They could have organized a surrender during that 48 hour truce. They could have put it on the website, at least. But they couldn’t say surrender. Too much pride or something.
This was just a pathetic attempt for the leadership of the Tigers to save their own skins without regard for any of the men under their command or the Tamil civilians they were cowering behind.
The only way to safely surrender is as part of a large group all at once. The leadership could have done that instead of doing it dangerously piecemeal like this.
I can’t say I’m sorry for them, and given the amount of blood the Sri Lankan Army shed to defeat the Tigers I can understand why they may have just shot the Tigers’ leaders. Those people committed every war crime there is, and the Army is supposed to let them live? To do it again in the future? Pretty hard to take. War crime? Yes. But the Tigers violated so many laws of war that it’s hard to say they deserved the protections.
May 24, 2009 - 6:59 am 24. john lynch:BTW I was hoping Wretchard would write about Sri Lanka. It seems to me this is a big story that’s mostly missed elsewhere.
May 24, 2009 - 7:00 am 25. john lynch:I guess the fundamental problem is whether to extend the protections of the laws of war to people who do not follow them.
It’s pretty clear what the Tigers would have done if the positions were reversed. So, perhaps the Sri Lankan government is just among the first to catch on that in the 21st century the only way to enforce rules is to punish those who violate them, not in a court but on the battlefield.
We’re already doing the same thing with drones. The detention regime is breaking down, so what’s the alternative? Killing the eneny’s leaders rather than going the trouble of capturing them. The Israelis came to the same conclusion a long time ago. Imprisoned enemy leaders are a liability rather than an asset.
Can anyone imagine Robert E Lee or George. Washington acting the way Prabharakan did? Really?
May 24, 2009 - 7:19 am 26. Derek:The Sri Lankan forces understood the situation better than any. The leadership of the LTTE had an almost religious standing. Seeing him dead is like seeing the Imperial Emperor of Japan surrendering.
There didn’t seem to be any unconditional surrender even at that last hour. There were three conditions. So it wasn’t accepted.
And no one in their right mind after fighting a decades long insurgency war against a god figure will let the god figure get away.
And I agree with Wretchard. The West has shown itself utterly useless. Reminds me of a picture a friend took 6 months before the Balkans blew up in the 90’s. A group of Croatians gathered with a long banner saying ‘UN PLEASE HELP US’. They might as well have saved their breath.
And even worse in this situation, the West supported and funded the god figure.
A friend’s father, Dutch, went into Indonesia in 1946 as part of a Dutch contingent to root out Japanese holdouts. Nasty ugly war with many dead, but of course forgotten and probably not even known by many. He returned home to a country that didn’t want to acknowledge his existence. There have been a couple fire bombings in Toronto already possibly by Tamils. I wonder if anyone is going to chase down the hold out Tamils? Right now the canadian Liberal party is currying the Tamil favor to get their votes.
I’m sorry, but I have utterly no sympathy for anyone who supported even notionally suicide bombers.
Derek
May 24, 2009 - 8:14 am 27. Barry 0351:CHOICES:
1. accept surrender deal with bad propaganda about how you done em wrong and genocide, AP and other news trumpeting your war crimes while the captured Tigers plot another bloody war.
2. Kill them all as they step into the kill box and end this bullshit for a lot longer than the next news cycle.
May 24, 2009 - 8:34 am 28. Barry 0351:“I’d pick 2 also.”
stay out of the camps let them finish this war in total.
May 24, 2009 - 8:41 am 29. Herb:A “progressive” reading these comments would be shocked at the bloodymindedness of many of us (moi included).
Somebody posted a link yesterday to an article about the future of conservatism being an appeal to experience. I believe that this “shocking” attitude is a recognition of the applicability of experience to politics and to its extension, war.
We can all cite the dozens of case histories of why a lack of resolve and determination to win decisively and thoroughly has led to much, much greater bloodshed (almost exclusively visited on the innocent, which in my theology is the definition of murder). Punishment of the guilty loser LTTE is just and righteous because of their actions at war. Punishment of the German and Japanese civilian populations during the war was likewise. Cant get around corporate guilt on national efforts. I live in Georgia. The South was guilty of the Original American Sin. The Civil War (no bloodier in history) and its (brutal) aftermath purged it, but its effects lingered. It took 100 years for us to dig out from under the effects of that purging.
They say no sin goes unpunished. An excess of misplaced mercy is a sin, I think.
May 24, 2009 - 9:12 am 30. Blindman:Are these the lessons that Pakistan needs to draw from?
Sadly or not the way of the Romans has drawn validation from the cold and brutal history of “What Needs to be Done”.
Pakistan is that new horizon. I doubt that we will bother anymore to listen to those buffoons who babble about the end of history.
May 24, 2009 - 9:18 am 31. Subotai Bahadur:#7 Mike Sylvester
While not a high probability chance of survival/escape; the attempt by the LTTE leadership to escape and survive to fight another day in ambulances did make sense under the rules that the West had tried to impose on the GoSL in the past. There are innumerable instances where the medical vehicles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent have been used as both logistics systems and operationally by Hamas and Hezbollah, trading on their special status. Other NGO’s, including the UN are frequent collaborators with terrorists. The LTTE leadership admittedly did not have a lot of options left at that point, but it was not an illogical attempt.
The GoSL, with the backing of the Chinese, have shockingly [to the West] returned to “reality based” warfare. At the same time, the US has retreated deeper and deeper into the world of fantasy and illusion.
I find it interesting that in the wake of meeting with “Teh One”, Netanyahu has stated that construction will continue on existing settlements on the West Bank, AND that today a Tel Aviv University poll shows that 74% of the Israeli public believe that Obama will not prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, and that over half of the Israeli public wants to strike the Iranian nuclear program now.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.278ae37b736a0478b7223156a3bcf18a.401&show_article=1
Realpolitik is a bugger when reality is a stranger to the State Department.
Subotai Bahadur
May 24, 2009 - 9:34 am 32. E. Nigma:War is a bloody, messy business. That’s what makes it something to be avoided. When people forget just how cruel and brutal it can be, it always seems a prelude to the next armed conflict to “make the world safe for…(fill in the blank)…”.
It doesn’t mean war is always wrong, or the worst possible alternative. Just that is going to be destructive and murderous. As the most modern nation states now have incredibly powerful weapons making open warfare very unlikely, as the winners may lose as much as the losers, the alternative by the “Clever people” have been “Wars of National Liberation” or asymetrical warfare.
How we ultimately treat the detainees in Guantanmo (and those yet to be captured) is going to go a long way in either encouraging or discouraging these sorts of “asymetrical wars”. If our actions are clear and decisive, this will actually go a long way to discouraging the foolish hopefulness of those who start these bloody little wars. But I doubt our present administration has that mindset.
The last-minute appeal by the LTTE to the British and Americans would be funny if it were not so tragic. Sri Lanka developed an answer to their “asymetrical war”. It was bloody and bloody-minded, at odds with the scruples of the Christian West.
What will be the answer by Pakistan and India to escalating “asymetrical was” violence in the subcontinent?
May 24, 2009 - 9:43 am 33. RWE:After the Japanese Emperor announced that the country was surrendering to the Allies in August 1945, Vice Adm Ugaki, the IJN’s leader of the 5th Naval Air Fleet, decided to defy the order. Adm Ugaki had commanded some 2,500 Kamikaze fliers and wanted to go out the same way.
He had directed that 3 dive bombers be prepared for one last strike, but when he got to the airfield there were 11 ready to go. He climbed into one of the bombers and they took off to hit the American fleet. Ukai issued one last defiant radio message, after which he and rest of the men that manned those 11 aircraft were never heard from again. There were no Kamikaze attacks reported by the U.S. that day.
Sometimes evil dies not with a bang but a whimper. Prabhakaran should be happy that he got at least a small bang.
May 24, 2009 - 10:36 am 34. erc rodson:With America’s Memorial Day upon us and RWE’s post # 33 vis Admiral Ugaki’s last mission, I wondered if Japan has a similar holiday to honor their war dead. It appears that they do not, which is ironic for a Shinto society.
Don’t think the Tiger’s will be getting much posthumous recognition.
May 24, 2009 - 11:13 am 35. steveaz:10. NahnCee:
“[...]given the enormous hassle that Gitmo has become.[...]”
Lately a thought keeps bothering me. What if the Left’s wailing over “Gitmo” isn’t because it violates terrorists’ human rights, besmirches America’s values and “recruits” terrorists? What if it’s really about relinquishing America’s last claim to a strategic part of the Cuban island.
Most politicians reserve their political capital for cap-stone issues. These are issues that, when resolved, resolved multiple downstream issues in the meantime. The invasion of Iraq was one of these as far as Bush was concerned. Apparently, so is “Closing Gitmo” to Obama.
Why? Naturally, it’s because it will solve two or more problems. But what are these incidental solutions. If you pare away the reasons given by Obama for closing the prison on the grounds that he’s being insincere in his reasoning (a conclusion many of us have come away from his recent speech with), then you’re left looking for his other incidental reasons.
Who gains if we “close” Gitmo. It looks as if Denver’s Super Max could get a big federal subsidy out of the gambit, but the Dem’s already own Denver, so this doesn’t seem like the only reason.
No, I’ll just out and state my suspicions. The CBC has a fetish for the Castros: Obama may be looking for a back-door that’ll give his friends what they want, and that means giving up America’s toe-hold on what used to enemy territory.
Call Gitmo America’s Golan Heights. It is a strategic toe-hold on an island that once hosted nuclear weapons aimed at our homeland. I’m sure that, like Syria’s Assad, Raul Castro’d sure like to have it back.
May 24, 2009 - 11:39 am 36. john lynch:Wretchard #16
What happened to the Tigers is a lot like what happened to Iraq in 2003.
Saddam Hussein thought that international pressure could stop the US invasion, or at least limit it to southern Iraq. He found out differently, just as Prabharakan did.
Once more, “international diplomacy” gave false hope and prevented a peaceful resolution. If the LTTE had only been dealing with the government they may have realized their doom earlier and begun serious surrender talks. Ditto with Saddam if he’d realized that the UN dance was meaningless since George W. Bush was determined to overthrow him.
All the impotent talk of cease fires merely gave hope to the Tigers and encouraged them to continue the war and kill more people. In the end more people died because of the sincere efforts of diplomats from all over the world. It is maddening that people who enable wars are never held accountable.
May 24, 2009 - 12:03 pm 37. john lynch:My apologies for spamming this topic, but here’s the last thing.
The media is acting as if the herding of 100k people into a war zone just happened. It was a deliberate strategy by the LTTE to create a humanitarian crisis. It was deliberately planned to put international pressure on the Sri Lankan government so that the Tigers could escape with something less than total surrender. This is obvious, and yet so many people who should know better, or would know better if they just thought about it for a couple minutes, continue to let themselves be used.
And it could have worked. Every time a headline read “US and UK call for ceasefire in Sri Lanka,” or “UN representative warns of humanitarian crisis,” it gave hope to the LTTE that they could win. It validated the strategy. Why do we keep doing this?
May 24, 2009 - 12:22 pm 38. Rurik:This may be an appropriate time for other societies to draw the proper lesson. The LTTE waged an ethnic and a cultural war. Had they won, their treatment of the Sinhalese would have been no more magnanimous, probably even worse. Now they reap what they started. “Sorry ’bout that MF.”
May 24, 2009 - 12:24 pm 39. twgin:If there is a decisive “setttlement” in the Middle East, how would the various potential victors behave? Who expects the Palis or the Izzies to show restraint after the next major bloodbath? Not I.
If any of those American Civil War scenarios actually develops, what will happen? I don’t look for either (or any) side to show much mercy. War has become once again serious business. There may be laws for wars between “governing entities” but not wars between peoples. Even for those individuals who didn’t want to be participants.
Anyone notice Marie Colvin’s involvment ? She’s um, a reporter I think. But what a rush for her at the end; she’s on the phone with the Tigers, with the UN, relaying terms, trying to set up a surrender. What a chance to make a difference, to be a player. Pretty clear evidence that the press no longer wants to report the story but rather to be part of, if not the driver of, the story.
May 24, 2009 - 12:32 pm 40. sirius_sir:Pretty clear evidence that the press no longer wants to report the story but rather to be part of, if not the driver of, the story.
Again, it goes back to a question of loyalties. In the case of a Bilal Hussein, loyalty may reside with the other side. In that instance, I would prefer strict neutrality.
But in the famous hypothetical positing foreknowledge about an impending enemy attack, Peter Jennings initially stated he would try to warn U.S. soldiers–only to change his position when challenged by Mike Wallace to remember that the journalist had only one duty, that to remain detached and simply report the story. But in that instance, I would prefer the journalist take a more active part in determining the outcome of the story.
In a perfect world, and all things being equal, it could be argued Mike Wallace advocates the right approach. But this isn’t a perfect world and all things are not equal. I can’t also ignore the sneaking suspicion that Wallace would be at the forefront of those who would defend Bilal Hussein, scruples be damned. But maybe I’m just cynical enough to think he would have no trouble talking out both sides of his mouth at the same time and think he was being nothing but truthful and eloquent.
May 24, 2009 - 1:57 pm 41. NahnCee:1. Is Marie Colvin French, by any chance? Reminding me of AF2 creating and then pushing the Mohammed Dura Palestinian/Israeli faux murder story.
2. RE: closing Gitmo — why couldn’t the terrorists left there be moved to Alcatraz? It was a military prison before it became a tourist attraction, and I’m sure it’s big enough to accommodate however many terrorists who are still at Gitmo, not having managed to finagle their way out. California could use the money, and we could start a lottery betting on which born-in-the-desert terrorist would drown first trying to escape. Not only that, but it’s supposed to be haunted. Be interesting seeing how Islamists deal with REALLY bad ghosts. (Although I’m not quite sure how much worse it could be than Abu Ghraib pre-American invasion.)
May 24, 2009 - 2:12 pm 42. wretchard:I think Colvin is British, but American by birth. The Tamil cause, from what I’ve read, is a real one. But that cause was hijacked long ago by the LTTE. Moderates do not do well in a conflict situation. Extremists the world over leave no room in the middle and thereby prosper. Ironically, the necessary precondition for the advancement of the Tamil cause should have been the defeat of the LTTE; and the West ought to have provided a way forward along those lines so that a) the defeat of the Tigers caused the minimum of collateral damage; b) they had a seat at the victory table in order to moderate the reprisals which could be expected to follow; and c) to help direct the post-war settlement in ways that will safeguard the Tamil interests.
But due to ineptitude, misfortune or stupidity, the West blew it and left an opening for China, who will not advise gentleness. On the contrary, the Chinese way of suppressing insurgencies is the Public Security Bureau and more Public Security Bureau. In a way the NGOs did to the peace process what the Tigers did from the other extreme. They destroyed the middle ground. By insisting on the absolutely perfect they made things impossible. The result wasn’t something slightly less than perfect, but a wholesale rejection of the NGO concepts. Enter China.
This is the hidden danger in all these proposals to bare our throats to enemy; to rely on “moral authority”; to create a “world without nuclear weapons”. It’s a grand stance. But if the West is facing its own version of the Prabhakarans in geopolitical terms, who attack even while they talk, who are megalomanic, then when political correctness is finally flung away in disgust, the ideology that will replace will likely be a savagery that would not have occurred in the first place.
But I don’t think the self-proclaimed enlightened will see it that way. The UN and the NGOs have become a vast system of “outdoor relief” for the social science departments of academic institutions, who descend on conflicts with their rapporteurs, ethical auditors, gender sensitivity consultants, carbon counters, lawyers and whatnot. It’s a system that exists for its own benefit and hearkens only to its own voice. You would be mistaken to think this vast system is about the poor, the downtrodden or the oppressed. It’s about them. Even now in Sri Lanka it’s about them and their mantra-like idiocies.
May 24, 2009 - 2:54 pm 43. Morenuancedthanyou:Eric Rodson #34
May 24, 2009 - 3:41 pm 44. markb:As you might know, Japanese who died serving in the military are enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine. Japanese prime ministers visit the shrine on August 15 as “private citizens”, a cover story still unaccepted by most of the other Asian countries. It will probably be a long, long time before Japan has a day to commemorate its war dead.
Mike Sylwester @7
“And I thought the ambulance story was preposterous. There is no way anyone could have imagined he could escape the surrounded area by hiding in an amubulance.”
Here is a video of Hamas making their escape in a UN ambulance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAR_Iwq9-R0
May 24, 2009 - 3:52 pm 45. Tcobb:The UN and the NGOs have become a vast system of “outdoor relief” for the social science departments of academic institutions, who descend on conflicts with their rapporteurs, ethical auditors, gender sensitivity consultants, carbon counters, lawyers and whatnot. It’s a system that exists for its own benefit and hearkens only to its own voice. You would be mistaken to think this vast system is about the poor, the downtrodden or the oppressed. It’s about them. Even now in Sri Lanka it’s about them and their mantra-like idiocies.
IMHO, Wretchard, never have truer words been spoken. In previous threads you have quoted articles in which the Wise have attributed the fall of the Tamil Tigers to their loss of “moral authority.” Its a common theme: the morally just shall triumph.
But now we move into phase two of doublethink. For just as the Wise believe that the morally just will prevail when a conflict is in progress, so also do they also believe that no contest, military or economic, can result in a clear winner unless the winners “cheated” in some fashion. The current narrative of the Tigers as terrorists will soon vanish down the memory hole, to be replaced by the manufactured history of the brave and noble fighters who were exterminated by a reactionary regime.
May 24, 2009 - 4:46 pm 46. feeblemind:Some feeble minded questions: How long do you think this will be remembered by the West? A week? Perhaps two? Is China evolving into the power that can be relied on? The one that will provide more than words in a crisis? Sri Lanks is now rid of the Tamil Tigers, but they are getting long term Chinese guests in exchange, thanks to the naval base being built. What happens when the day comes that Sri Lanka no longer wants a Chinese presence in their country? Will the Chinese meekly pack up and move away?
May 24, 2009 - 11:04 pm 47. Gringo:feeblemind:
What happens when the day comes that Sri Lanka no longer wants a Chinese presence in their country? Will the Chinese meekly pack up and move away?
Put it this way: I doubt the Chinese will go gentle into that good night.
May 25, 2009 - 5:00 am 48. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e69v1:[...] Inconsistencies in Sri Lanka. [...]
May 25, 2009 - 9:01 am 49. Roderick Reilly:All things considered, the Sri Lankan government forces made the “right” decision in killing the Tamil Tiger leadership. Remember, all things considered, and from the standpoint of Sri Lankan needs and stability.
May 26, 2009 - 10:39 am 50. LarryD:I wonder how long it will be, before some side in a conflict decides that the UN (and NGOs optionally) need to be demonized and labeled as not merely the allies of their enemies, but as the evil foreign influences in the conflict. Which might have the benefit of making it easier to reconcile with said enemies once the war is won. But would certainly be the preparatory step to openly attacking the UN etc.
May 26, 2009 - 12:32 pm 51. anon:Gringo:
feeblemind:
What happens when the day comes that Sri Lanka no longer wants a Chinese presence in their country? Will the Chinese meekly pack up and move away?
Put it this way: I doubt the Chinese will go gentle into that good night.
—
The Chinese can’t even invade an island barely
off of their mainland – Taiwan. I imagine that
a few ‘accidental’ muggings of Chinese diplomats
and they will go meekly back to murdering the Tibetans who have no means what-so-ever of self-defense.
That supposes, of course, that GoSL ‘WANTS’ the Chinese to leave.
More to the point … what if the Israelis decide that UN Security Council Veto holder P.R.C. is a better big power sponser than the U.S.A.? Especially now that huge pockets of natural gas have been found off of their coast in the Med.
May 26, 2009 - 6:45 pm 52. njcommuter:The LTTE pioneered modern terrorist technique. One part of that technique is false surrender. Someone tell me please whether the LTTE was known for that tactic, or whether it came later.
If the LTTE was known for false surrender, then there is at least a case to be made that the LTTE had no right to expect the flag of truce to be respected. Against this is the claim that the Sri Lanken government made a promise.
Driving Sri Lanka into the hands of China for nothing more than to want to fight terrorism could not have been a Good Thing. Nothing good will come of it, and much ill may.
May 28, 2009 - 12:40 amSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.