Saturday, January 27, 2007

meaning of victory in this war

well done! everyone.

sri lankan navy foiled a ltte terrorist attack against the harbor early morning today, destroying three boats and arresting three suspects from one of the boats. the harbor closed temporarily, was back in operation within an hour. good work!

however this will not be the last terrorist attack against infrastructure or civilians. pussies will try and try again and sometimes they will succeed. even when they are reduced to a handful they will continue to explode bombs. that is part of modern life whether in colombo, london, mumbai, madrid, bali, or new york. there will always be murderers.

victory in this war will not be determined by the attacks carried out by terrorists but rather by how many or how few people will be forced to live and act in terror, day in and day out. as calm response in the south to this kind of incident during last twenty years have shown, people there are now free from this terror. calmer we are, greater the victory over terrorists.

all they want is senseless backlash. instead we are giving them what they deserve, a disciplined and pragmatic military response with the limited resources available, that will with time (a very long time - we have to be prepared) reduce them to a handful.

as part of a democratic state it is our duty to ensure that all citizens of sri lanka live lives free of terror and criminal intimidation. we are no longer forced into doing what the megalomaniac big pussy wants, we should not let people in vanni be forced either. fewer people he can control by terror, lesser will be his ability to terrorize others.

if that can be done without anyone getting killed all the better, but we live in the real world, not in some pacifist utopia. nor are we in a place where wars are like computer games or hollywood movies and only the villains get killed, or a place where good public relations etc. will do the trick ( as some cocooned pseudo 'realpolitik' advocate/s seem to believe). make no mistake, people will get killed; heroes willingly, innocents accidentally, and villains deservedly.

question is whether we want to live or let our fellow citizens live under terror or not. once we make the decision we have to accept the consequences of that decision (this is where some people who say they want to defeat ltte fudge and run, as with the so called 'realpolitik' advocate).

i think sri lankans have made the decision. let’s stick to it.

--

some peaceniks always give....'peacebuilding' (lets say) intentions for terrorist attacks. for instance after galle attack they said it was for strengthening ltte's position at peace talks. we saw what actually happened at peace talks. as i said then nothing changed because of the attack. in fact their only aim was a communal backlash real or at least propaganda generated for international consumption. nothing of the sort happened; few idiots who tried were stopped immediately. that more than anything is why big pussy is doomed.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

WARMONGER

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't call you a warmonger, but I think you have not taken into account that the current military escalation of the war is, for many reasons, economically unsustainable.

What you keep failing to appreciate is that the argument against your recommended course of action is not a pacifist one, in fact it is not even a moral or ethical one by any means. It is a pragmatic economic and strategic one.

sittingnut said...

anon at 1/28/2007 5:47 pm
your comment is very enlightening to you, i am sure. :-)

ravana
economically unstable? as far as i know there hasn't been much of an impact on the economy. numbers tell a different story. gdp is growing at the fastest rate in recent times , government revenue is increasing.

main blot is the inflation caused by 1/ growth 2/ budget deficit. but budget deficit is not mainly due to military expenditure but due to welfare expenditure ( subsidies etc.) as well as recent expansion in infrastructure projects.
deficit needs to be handled but need not preclude limited fairly small scale focused military operations of the sort already completed in east. as i said here that is what we will get. don't expect large scale operations . pussy will be eaten bit by bit.

you need to put forward economic numbers to sustain your argument.

Anonymous said...

Six years ago the LTTE hit one target - the airport, and economy stopped growing, and declined. This shows how easy it is to affect the economy. One sinking of a cargo ship approaching Colombo harbour and the economy is f*cked.

The more desperate the LTTE gets, the more desperate their acts will become. They are going back to pure terrorism it looks like. They could hit any economically crippling target now, from garment factories to the tea auction, to the share market, to a Hikkaduwa nightclub. You the LTTE is going to follow the same Balasinghamesque policies? No way. And they have proven how creative they can be at getting at even the most protected military and political targets. Getting economic targets is much easier, and they are much harder to protect.

Apart from this, the government's combination of policies is resulting in 20% inflation. This is unsustainable in itself. They have to drop some of the fiscal expansion - something will have to give.

sittingnut said...

ravana:
you have too simplistic view of the economy. decline in 2001 was a result of several factors not the airport attack. after all they did hit airport, port, central bank, oil tanks, transport and many other places before without much effect.

others factors like failed large scale military operations, global slow down, 9/11, government profligacy before elections in 2000 contributed more. see the figures for other countries in the region for 2001

it is unlikely that such combination will appear again.
in fact the main risk will come from a slow down is usa than from any terrorist attack.

inflation is the main economic problem here. caused as i said by fast gdp growth (7.5%) and government expenditure ( mainly for welfare and infrastructure). the central bank rates are being raised to cool down. they should curb the subsides too. it wont be that difficult to get them down especially with new defections. i wouldn't be surprised if q1 2007 inflation be substantially lower than q4 2006.

ltte is pure terrorist throughout there wasn't and isn't any difference. 'Balasinghamesque' policies ?! :-) some are naive.

given that they try and try again they will succeed sometimes . so what is new? it wont make a single difference.

Anonymous said...

I hope you're right, but I am not so sure.

Anonymous said...

Will the LTTE be satisfied with a power sharing solution? I guess not. They'd want a separate state. If you analyze what the LTTE did during CFAs it is not too hard to figure what their main objective is. They cannot be trusted.
Prabhakaran should be treated with his own medicine. LTTE's military arsenal should be crushed and then only should they be dragged on to the peace table (without any bargaining power.)

New Mig27's and LRRP (Long Range Recon Patrol; currently part of 3rd Special Forces Regiment) of the SL army should make this task easier.

Anonymous said...

For those who read local papers (not the govt ones) in Sri Lanka and watch private news channels, it's turned out that the boats that entered the harbor was fishing boats and the men captured had nothing to do with LTTE. Turns out except one the rest of them were SSinhalese.

sittingnut said...

lightning_struck_tower
thanks for the comment. i agree with most of what you say

anon at 2/04/2007 10:25 pm
boats did not enter the harbor but were destroyed far from the it ( closest was 6 miles away ) . the boat that was not blown up and only caught fire and ppl arrested may have been fishermen . others probably were terrorists.
what the independent private media really reported on this story can be seen in the situation report column in the sunday times of 01/28/07 and 02/04/07. read both columns one week apart on this issue and then judge. others also reported in a similar vein.
anyway this post is not merely about that particular attack but about such attacks and the meaning of victory.