Power Play
(Courtesy of The Island)
Listne to this;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZjofV4vxU8
It looks as if visiting American dignitaries far outnumbered ordinary Chinese tourists in this country. The latest US diplomat to land here is Samantha Power, America’s ambassador to the UN and President Barack Obama’s confidante. The incumbent administration’s efforts to curry favour with the western bloc seem to have reached fruition. President Maithripala Sirisena boasts of a gloveless handshake he received from Queen Elizabeth in London a few months ago. A minister gave a female US envoy, on a short visit here, the other day a bone crushing bear hug.
Ambassador Power did not consider her tour of Sri Lanka complete without a visit to Jaffna, where she played elle at a school. She reportedly declared that civilian life was back to normal in that part of the country. It was a pleasant sight to see her at play. Northern Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran was seen dancing attendance on her. In 2013, British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was here for the CHOGM, also enjoyed a game of cricket. Would such things have been possible before May 2009, when the LTTE was defeated militarily?
On seeing Power running while playing elle in Jaffna we recalled a nasty experience US Ambassador Robert Blake had in the Eastern Province while Prabhakaran was alive and kicking way back in 2007. A Sri Lankan Air Force chopper carrying a group of foreign envoys came under an LTTE mortar attack in Batticaloa. The ambassadors had a narrow escape. They jumped out of the helicopter which landed amidst mortar fire and ran as fast as their legs could carry them. Blake suffered bruises and Italian Ambassador Pio Mariani head wounds. The international community did not take any action against the LTTE!
Sri Lanka is now safe enough for foreign dignitaries to enjoy ball games unlike the countries where their governments have spent colossal amounts of funds to engineer regime changes besides creating and backing pro-western militias to restore democracy. In 2012, US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was captured, tortured and killed by a mob in Benghazi described as the cradle of US-backed Libyan ‘revolution’. Nor are they safe in the countries where the western governments have fought costly wars to eliminate terrorists who trouble them. In Afghanistan no US leaders/diplomats in their proper senses will get out of heavily armoured vehicles to stand in the middle of a playground. In Brussels, restaurants and bars have been advised to remain closed after 6.00 pm in view of terrorist threats. (Is it that terrorists don’t strike during day time?) This is the price the developed world has had to pay for harbouring terrorists and allowing terror networks to be established on their soil. It is now reaping the whirlwind having sowed the wind over the last several decades.
This country is free from terrorism today because it resisted western pressure, refused to talk to terrorists and neutralised the scourge militarily. If the Rajapaksa government had done as the western governments said and opted for negotiations with the LTTE the country would still have been plagued with terrorism; Ambassador Power would not have dared come here let alone go all the way to Jaffna to play elle; Wigneswaran would not have taken to politics and there would have been political assassinations, bomb attacks on civilian targets, mine blasts and child abductions. Power would have had to obtain a separate visa to enter the LTTE-held areas if she had plucked up the courage to come here while Prabhakaran was around. It is a supreme irony that the present-day rulers, most of whom once followed the advice of the Tokyo Co-chairs (the US, Norway, the EU and Japan), grovelled before the LTTE, compromised national security, enabled the terrorists to infiltrate all parts of the country and prepare for Eelam War IV on the pretext of talking peace are being praised for normalcy in the former war zone.
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