Blustering their way from Blake to Barack

The US cannot be ignorant of the fact that the LTTE had links with al Qaeda and LTTE operatives had been to Afghanistan and made contacts there, as it did with some terrorist groups operating out of Pakistan.
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By Underpala

(October 03, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In years gone by, development pundits opined that the benefits of policies and projects conceived at the highest levels will eventually percolate down to people who will say a big thank you and all that.

This came to be known in development circles as the top-down process or, more colourfully, the trickle-down effect.

Since then, the theory has been largely discredited and the generally voiceless millions around the world are still at the bottom of the development ladder and are waiting to see an improvement to their livelihoods.

While development strategists in the World Bank, IMF and assorted INGOs that present themselves to the developing world as aid workers (humanitarian or blood sucking) are scratching their heads and thinking of new ways to hoodwink the poor, politicians and their diplomatic bag carriers have upended the old theory and applied it to their international adventurism.

So what do we have but miserable fakes like Robert Blake who is trying to make a career by saving terrorists. While Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu and Jehan Perera act like Wagnerian spear-carriers to a Washington aria, Blake the Fake embellishes gossip and hearsay that eventually turns up in Congressional report as though all this was the Gospel truth.

But this is the Gospel according to Blake and his torch-bearers which not only end up as contemporary verities but get reflected higher up the political totem of the American administration.

In this bottom-up process from Blake to Barack via the hilarious Hillary, US policy statements and observations are littered with hype, hypocrisy and hallucinations which might suggest a serious drug problem which of course President Obama intends to tackle with his new approach to health care.

American hypocrisy and its tendency to lecture and hector everybody but themselves like those fundamentalist preachers who ended up on our shores after the December tsunami, Bible in one hand and a packet of powdered milk in the other hoping to convert the multitude, is best epitomized in Barack Obama’s address to the United Nations last week.

First apperarance

The fact that Obama, making his first appearance at the UN General Assembly since becoming president, drew only desultory and scattered applause according to reports, is because the world has become accustomed to the lies, deceit, spurious human rights concerns and high-handedness that have characterized US conduct over the years both inside and outside America.

The occasional clapping might have also been because of a habit among some diplomats to put their hands together to keep themselves awake. But not having been in New York I cannot say for certain unlike some western journalists who are imbued with the kind of prescience that can count dead bodies from several thousand kilometers away and write virtual eye-witness reports without being at the scene.

Now that Blake the Fake, possibly with the collective hearsay provided by a predecessor in Colombo Ambassador Bumstead, oops... sorry, Lumstead and another loud-mouthed predecessor Patricia Sheaffer, is instrumental in putting together a report to the US Congress on Sri Lanka we should see much of the stuff regurgitated.

The report is not out at this writing. But one does not need to be endowed with the deductive powers of a Sherlock Holmes to imagine the contents of this report. The State Department instigated report will cry over the IDPs, accuse Sri Lanka of war crimes, human rights violations, denial of press freedom and the killing and harassment of journalists and many more crimes perceived or told to Blake by Tamil Tiger members and sympathizers .

Had some country untainted by similar or worse accusations made such allegations one could at least understand it, that is, if one is able to find such a country with the lily-white record of conduct.

But coming from a country which in most of its recent history has invaded several sovereign nations, has been instrumental in instigating the assassination of leaders and toppling democratically elected governments, has killed well over a million innocent civilians through aerial and ground attacks on foreign soil and economic sanctions, instigated one country to attack another (Saddam Hussain’s Iraq against Iran), has violated humanitarian and international law by incarcerating persons without charge and transporting others to foreign jurisdictions where torture in a known practice, it is strange and hypocritical.

It sure takes a lot of gall for those who were trying to rescue the LTTE leadership from elimination to speak of fighting terrorism wherever it occurs and even threatening to violate the sovereignty of other nations to do so, as President Obama did in his speech to the United Nations.

It is well known that Blake and others of his ilk were urging a ceasefire in the guise of saving the civilians when in fact they were keen to save the LTTE leaders.

Remarking that the US would not permit any safe haven for al Qaeda from which to launch an attack, Obama said the US reserves a right to violate the sovereignty of any other state in pursuit of anyone the US has declared to be terrorists.

That is what Obama told the world last week. Essentially it means that the US will not allow al Qaeda to operate from anywhere and to hell with sovereignty if the US decides to chase after anybody or organization it has deemed terrorist.

The US cannot be ignorant of the fact that the LTTE had links with al Qaeda and LTTE operatives had been to Afghanistan and made contacts there, as it did with some terrorist groups operating out of Pakistan.

That has been established even by reputable international strategic studies institutes.
The US banned the LTTE more than a decade ago as a foreign terrorist organization and it still remains so despite attempts by LTTE supporters to bribe US officials to delist the Tigers as a terrorist group.

Rescue mission

If Obama’s words are true and he is not lying to the world as US has done many a time, the US should have been pursuing the LTTE vigorously, more so because of its links with al Qaeda, the Taliban and militant Islamic groups. The US should have helped Sri Lanka to do so because the LTTE has been active in US soil too as it was outside.

Yet, what do we find? Instead of helping eliminating a listed terrorist group whose transnational links would be a threat to US interests at home and abroad, the LTTE’s mouthpieces in the State Department went out of their way to mount a rescue mission that would have saved some of the most ruthless terrorists in the world.

Having failed to do that despite all the claimed political, diplomatic and military power at its command, Blake and his cohorts are now flirting with the remnants of the LTTE like that conman Rudrakumaran who was a member of the LTTE delegation to the peace talks.

The US had a consistent policy that it does not negotiate with terrorists. But we know that Washington has been doing just that with the LTTE because according to Hillary Clinton’s classification there are good terrorists and bad terrorists and the LTTE are good (good for nothing really, except suicide bombing and killing their own people).

Space does not allow me to comment further on the lies and hypocrisy in the Barack Obama speech but you should read it carefully.

Yet, tell me say this. Obama wants the world to believe that his administration has cut loose from the Bush policies that earned the US the opprobrium of the world for its unilateral conduct and its commitment of war crimes that have gone unpunished.

Nowhere does Obama actually explicitly state that he is reversing those policies.

On the contrary, he endorses the unilateral conduct of the Bush years and says he is ready to continue with them even if he has to violate the sovereignty of other nations and kill thousands in the pursuit of US goals without any consideration for human rights or humanitarian international law.

So, Obama has proved to be all hype and half truths.

Maybe Blake and his retired cohorts should spend their time more profitably by preparing a report to Congress on the Bush and Obama administrations’ lack of respect for international law and its continued commitment of war crimes.

It seems the Americans who have not defeated a rag-tag Taliban and, according to its top military man in Afghanistan, will never do as it is, feels that they have not been able to achieve what a small country such as Sri Lanka has done.

Envy, my dear Blake, is showing through and through because your words in Colombo that Sri Lanka cannot defeat the LTTE militarily has been proved to be so much bovine excreta. Now eat your own words.

-Sri Lanka Guardian