The Brutality in Sri Lanka

Michael J. Totten has an interview with Robert D. Kaplan, mainly on the subject of Sri T. Lanka. Sorry, Sri Lanka. But spreading out to Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere. It's an interesting read: 

Sri Lanka defeated, more or less completely, a 26 year-long insurgency. They killed the leader and the leader’s son. But there are no takeaway lessons for the West here. The Sri Lankan government did it by silencing the media, which meant capturing the most prominent media critic of the government and killing him painfully. And they made sure all the other journalists knew about it. [...]

There are a thousand disappearances a year in Sri Lanka separate from the war. Journalists are terrified there. The only journalism you read is pro-government. So that’s one thing they did.

The Tamil Tigers had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the government and say "you have to kill all the people to get to us." So the government obliged them.  [...]

They killed thousands of civilians in the course of winning this war. It acted in a way so brutal that there are no lessons for the West.

Incidentally, via Snoopy, here's a comparison at Just Journalism of allegations of war crimes made in the UK broadsheets in the first five months of 2009, with regard to the recent troubles in Gaza and in Sri Lanka. No prizes for guessing which featured most, by a long way - with the honourable exception of the Times.

Comments

[maguro]

The Germans and Japanese had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the Allies and said "you have to kill all the people to get to us." So the Allies obliged them. [...]

They killed millions of civilians in the course of winning this war. They acted in a way so brutal that there are no lessons for Sri Lanka.

[tolkein]

That's how states put down rebellions in the days before Governments cared about 'public opinion', or rather, the opinion of journalists. I rather suspect that subjects in those days thought that rebels who lost and the people in whose midst they lived, got just deserts. I wonder how many people would have died in the long run if Sri Lanka had fought the insurgency the Western way? Mind you, I regard the actions of the Sri Lanka government as wicked, evil and immoral.

[Dom]

The mind-set here seems to be, let's see the world, in an attempt at open-mindedness, as the Germans, or the Japanese, or now the Iranians saw it; then our outlook will change.

May I ask why I need to take that first step? The point, of course, is to *not* see the world this way. There is a difference betweend open-mindedness and empty-headedness.