man, what’s with the george bush thing? as you say his war was unpopular in four years, having started with high ratings. ours has been on for 25-30, which gives plenty of time for plummeting of popularity, intsead of which approval ratings have gone way in the opposite direction. what you do not seem to get is the difference between a war fought overseas against a country which did nothing against one’s own , and a war fought internally against an enemy who sets off bombs in one’s towns and wants to carve out a piece of your territory, from within your own internationally recognised boundaries.

since you can’t get that basic difference, its a waste of my darn time - in fact anybody’s darn time– debating you.

When you say, “look, let us all be realistic” (as if we are not and only you are) or, “look, here is the logic” (as if we don’t understand logic) you sound more and more like a used car salesman, trying to sell an outdated, gas guzzling jalopy to people who know all about cars.

Regarding Obama’s position, you seem to be looking for sound bites. Read his many speeches and figure out what his position is on SL. You know his position on human rights violations by individuals, groups or states. You must have listened to his speech at the Google event when he referred to SL civil war as viscious and it is like many ethnic problem, it is the problem of the other. Then his general position, “Take away a person’s right, you take away their freedom. Without freedom there can be no justice. No justice, no peace.” This applies to a community as well, including the Black community in the US.

Please don’t compare the American Civil War as if Sri Lankan state is the Union and the Tamils are the slave owning States. It is the Sri Lankan State that has been trying to put Tamils under their control since 1956. If not for the LTTE, SL would have succeeded during JR’s monarchy. You bet on Varatharajah Perumal and you lost. Now you are betting on the Rajapakse Dynasty. I am sure you will jump ship before it sinks.

Please don’t forget that Senator Clinton is still in the Senate and Bill will have some say in foreign policy in the future. If a political solution is not found soon, SL will be facing a bleak economic and political future.

Be realistic, Ours is a politico-economic–social–military war. Military occupation of the North by Sri Lanka will be at the expense of the other three components. Military conquest of the East, even with USAID, Worlds Bank, ADB and others is already bursting at the seams. Sri Lanka occupying the North by military offensive will be like Hitler’s Germany occupying France. The outcome will be the same.

I expected you to back down, as you have, with “time-lines” being replaced by open-ended “trajectories”. This “bait and switch” trick was typical of the George Bush regime selling the Iraq war as well. The next step will be, in a years time, to re-define a no-win trajectory as somehow still a winning one, with the goal posts of “winning” shifted. (In fact, Gen. Sarath Fonseka is already in the midst of doing that; you will see if you analyse his statements over the last year).

Your analysis of the US situation, I would say, is just as poor as your analysis of the SL one. In fact, Bush’s Iraq war started with as much popularity as you claim for the the MR war on LTTE. And, like this one, it was sold by propagating false ideas at various levels. For my analysis on that see: http://nishan-iraq.blogspot.com/

The popularity of the Iraq war plummeted only when the truth, gradually, got widely exposed in the American media. That still took a good 4 years to happen, even without the obstacle of white vans to abduct, torture, imprison or kill journalists that were putting their finger on the truth. (Notice how your journalist friend Tissainayagam is being illegally kept in CID custody for a very long time now).

Of course you read col. Hariharan, and your strategy for “winning the peace”, echoes him in so many ways. But good judgement, which Barack Obama claims enabled him to oppose the Iraq war while it was still overwhelmingly popular, does not consist of just reading intelligence analysis, but also of independent thought and discernment.

This ends my comments and engagement on groundviews on your article.

There’s a general acceptance amongst the public that winning this thing means we have to fight fire with fire: bumping off ’suspected’ tiger supporters in the south without trial, mass arrest and detention of Tamils, attempted busing of Tamils out of Colombo, killing/kidnapping dissenting journalists. Is this a legitimate part of (even a necessary part of) this war? Also, war means IDPs by the thousands, bombs/artillery hitting civilian settlements, deep penetration units sometimes hitting civilian vehicles. Can we really be trusted to do right by society once this is won, when it is being won in such a dirty fashion, throwing human rights into the back of a white van? Have we become terrorists? Is this now a war between two rival terrorist groups? Has it always been so (black july was a government sponsored pogrom)? Is there no other way out of this other than eliminating the opposition?

I’m sure the rest of us would also be interested in your ideas of sharing/distributing power. Please share them with us too.

more seriously, can’t you see the trend line of military developments since last year, or even january? what is most dangerous is that people like you are living in cloud cockoo land, unble to acknowledge the objective trajectory….never mind the timing.

and hey, here’s one thing you have to go figure: Bush’s war is so unpopular , its all over the US opinion polls, while this war, with the consequences you claim it has, is perceived very differently by the sri lankan public which has lived through it for decades. go check the CPA opinion polls, inculding the latest by the center for irish studies. we’re talking stratospheric ratings in favour.

that’s because Bush’s is a war of aggression, invasion, occupation in a foreign country and is unsuccessful, while ours is a war of slf defence, reunification and national liberation…and by the way, is successfully prosecuted. don’t you even read Col Hariharan’s and Gen Mehta’s stuff?

That’s nonsense. Barack Obama never drew a distinction between terrorists and liberation movements. he has never used the phrase liberation movements even once, and certainly not to refer to any armed movement. you are confusing him with the defeated hillary clinton.

there is of course a difference between liberation movments and terrorist ones, which is why the sri lankan government has long recognised the PLO. could you ame one liberation movement or a state that resulted from a liberation struggle, that recognises the LTTE as a liberation movement? there are none.

President Bush invaded someone else’s country. the sri lankan government is fighting separatism in its own country. the closest american example is not Bush, but Lincoln! and please check out how that war was fought, especially in Georgia. ever heard the song about how they Burnt old Dixie down?