“Are we supposed to be unhappy that Sri Lanka has crushed the Tamil Tiger terrorists?”
Didn’t say that!
“We can learn no lessons from them because they crushed the terrorists too brutally? Of course not, because if we emulated them, then we too might brutally crush the terrorists we are fighting also. Heaven forbid!”
Bear in mind that we are involved in a global Counter-Insurgency. #1 on the COIN list of things to do is Protect the non combatant population (civilians), and not providing them with a reason to join the enemy. Oh yes that means the steel hand in the velvet glove.
I would recomend David Kilcullen’s “The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One”
Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam
John A. Nagl
(available from all the usual sources)
(Both these people work with Gen. David Petraeus on “The Surge” and writing the new Army Counter-Insurgency Manual)
In fighting a Counter-Insurgency very often, when it comes to fire power often...Less is More, and every situation (nation) is different, but theunder lying principles remain the same.
Kaplan: No, they didn’t.
MJT: I read a quote from one of the Tamil Tiger leaders who said he refused to train Islamist terrorists because he didn’t want to help anyone kill Americans.
This is just wrong....
LTTE is known to have links to PLO, PFLP, JI, MILF, abu sayyaf, and al-qaeda!