‘Bush-league’ editorial urges pinpoint strikes at LTTE leadership

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2009, 14:56 GMT]
Criticizing the policies and efforts of Obama, Hillary Clinton and Eric Solheim, the Washington Times in an editorial Sunday said that the Obama administration should not allow the Tigers to ‘snatch victory from the jaws of defeat’ but should help Colombo ‘by providing military and intelligence support for pinpoint strikes against the terrorist leadership’. Reflecting chauvinistic passion and imitating the style and line of Colombo’s newspapers, the editorial said: "Obama administration should mind its own business. The Sri Lankans are winning; we should let them finish the job". Commenting on the editorial, a political commentator in Colombo said: "Had Bush minded his own business, Tamils would have sorted out the crisis by now and Washington Times wouldn’t have had the occasion to tax itself so emotionally."

The editorial said: "Using innovative counterinsurgency tactics, the Sri Lankan defense forces dismantled the guerrilla network on land and at sea. They drove the Tigers from their safe havens and bottled them up in a four-square-mile patch of beachfront swampland. Tiger leaders are hunkered down in underground bunkers trying desperately to stave off their looming demise.

“We can only imagine American satisfaction if we had al Qaeda in this position. It is unconscionable for the United States to castigate its Sri Lankan ally for prevailing in its war against terrorism. The Tamil Tigers have purposefully created the conditions for a humanitarian crisis and deserve neither amnesty nor mercy."

The political commentator in Colombo responded that Washington Times is looking at the crisis from the vantage of 'typical Sinhala state chauvinism'. By knowingly ignoring the ethnic perspectives of the crisis, the long legacy of a national liberation struggle in the island and by sizing it to the 'Bush-phobia of terrorism', the Washington Times is neither meaning good for Obama’s US nor to the island of Sri Lanka.

“Some sections in US have never learnt, despite living in the land of postmodernism that in the times of ‘people’s politics’, brutal military victories doesn’t make any sense, but are only counter productive to the perpetrators," the political commentator said welcoming the statement from White House Saturday, that military end of the conflict breeding further enmity will end hopes for reconciliation and a unified Sri Lanka in the future.

However, progress of events such as the intense bombardment of the safety zone after the White House statement, and the military build up of the Sri Lanka Army, indicate very much that the Washington Times' thinking is taking an upper hand in the minds of the elements of oppression, he further commented.

External Links:

Washington Times:

Editorial: Tigers at bay