Targeted killing is new US focus:

No plans for Afghan democracy - Biden

Recalling the SLAF’s well targeted attack on November 7, 2007 on the LTTE’s Voice of Tigers transmission centre in Kilinochchi, when S P Thamilchelvam, the head of the LTTE’s Political Wing, was killed along with several other LTTE cadres, there was little doubt that Thamilchelvam was an LTTE cadre. He was posthumously conferred the LTTE’s highest military rank of ‘Brigadier’

The death of Thamilchelvam and the other fighting cadres of the LTTE in this attack led to a roar of protest, both here and abroad, about attacking journalists at work. Many ‘watchdogs’ of media freedom too rushed in to protest, stating it was another example of the Sri Lankan Government’s disregard for Human Rights and Media Freedom. They cared little that all of those killed were terrorists, even if engaged in propaganda work in a radio transmission centre of a terrorist organization, challenging the sovereignty of Sri Lanka.

What was important to the protesters was that those killed were ‘journalists’. It did not matter what these ‘journalists’ were doing with military cadres of the LTTE or the leader of its Political Wing.

The picking of terrorist leaders and those working with them or carrying out their orders is now openly advocated by the United States in its fight against Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

Military strategy

The US and NATO allies may or may not be talking a leaf out of the Sri Lankan military strategy against the LTTE, or what the UK Economist and some decidedly pro-LTTE organizations abroad refer to with some concern as the ‘Sri Lankan Option’ in the battle against terror.

But they have realized that they cannot keep alive the myth about trying to build a democracy or pay much respect for human rights in the battle against the terror of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Leading strategists, both political and military, in the United States don’t mince their words in admitting to the strategy of focusing on the “Targeted killing of terrorists”, as the way to take the US and other forces back home.

Joe Biden

S P Thamilchelvam

Hillary Clinton

Interestingly there is hardly any protest from those who were howling in horror against what was happening in Sri Lanka when the Government was trying to free its Tamil citizens from the clutches of LTTE terror, and also bring peace to the entire country.

There are no voices now demanding that the US and NATO declares a truce with Al-Qaeda, and goes on with the once stated goal of exporting Western democracy to Afghanistan; the Bush era promise that made Born-Again and other Evangelists to pack loads of Bibles in their luggage to bring a new spiritual liberation to the Afghan people, from their traditional faith of Islam.

The so-called goal of using the fire-power of the West in the Swat Valley of Pakistan and the adjacent mountain regions to establish democracy in Afghanistan is no more.

The War against Terror has now come down to just one thing. Kill the Terrorists. Target them; hunt them down. This current US policy in Afghanistan has been best enunciated by US Vice President Joe Biden.

In an interview with NBC’s Today on Thursday (July 29) the US Vice President said “We are in Afghanistan for one express purpose: Al Qaeda,” he said.

US policy

“Al Qaeda exists in those mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We are not there to nation-build.

We’re not out there deciding we’re going to turn this into a Jeffersonian democracy and build that country.”

The New York Times (July 31) reported this admission of real US policy under the headline ‘Targeted killing is New US Focus in Afghanistan’. The incoming commander of the military’s Central Command, Gen James N Mattis, was asked last week by Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, whether the administration’s July 2011 date for starting to withdraw American troops implied a shift in emphasis from counterinsurgency to a strategy concentrating on killing terrorists.

“I think that is the approach, Senator,” he replied. “The emerging American model can best be described as “counter-terrorism, with some counterinsurgency strategy that forces the hands of insurgent leaders,” said a diplomat with knowledge of the planning.”

It is the killing of terrorists that matters to the US today, just as it did for Sri Lanka last year, when the LTTE was refusing to free the Tamil people it held under its jackboot of terror.

The first ever conference of nearly 50 nations held in Kabul recently that discussed the transformation of Afghanistan into a New Democracy, free of corruption, is of little importance, although it had Secretary of State Hillary Clinton make pious statements of US aims for the future progress of Afghanistan and its people.

Faced with the humiliation of not being able to capture Osama bin Laden, a creature of the CIA’ own making, for the past eight years, the US is now facing the reality.

The US troops are there to kill and kill they will. What is important is that no organization that was so angered by Sri Lanka when it decided to target the terrorists and their leaders, will be uttering one word of protest at this ‘Targeted killing’ in a foreign land.

You can bet your first and last dollar there will be no call for any War Crimes Tribunal on these ‘Targeted killings’ whether done by skilled snipers, high flying drones controlled from US soil, or bombing raids over Afghan and tribal villages.

The killing will go on, and so will the silence of the international community continue.