I find that ‘A Sophist’ has indulged in a little bit of sophistry responding to my letter of 24th January in which I drew attention to comments made by some retired senior service personnel to the Sinhala weekly ‘Ravaya’ at the very commencement of Eelam War 4, underlining the futility of engaging the LTTE, militarily.

The ex-service chiefs, among them, were not offering military advice to the government saying that if the war had to be won the armed services have to be given the necessary resources unlike when they were in command. That would have been salutary advice indeed! On the contrary, they were trying to dissuade the government from taking the gauntlet that the LTTE threw by capturing the Mavil Aru anicut and daring the legal government of this country to take up the challenge. They were simply mouthing the supercilious advice that the peace (at any cost) lobby in this country and their patrons outside had been offering even after the LTTE had given up negotiations as a means of finding a solution to the national question when they walked away from the peace talks held in Geneva in April 2003, and thereafter dumped Ranil Wickremesinghe, the arch-angel of peace, at the Presidential Election held in 2005.

As pointed out by me earlier, the (retired) Navy officer went to the extent of saying that our soldiers just cannot fight and related how he urinated inside his bunker in sheer fear of the LTTE, implying thereby that that’s all our brave soldiers are capable of doing! Fortunately for us, the Navy which has done an excellent job in helping to bring the LTTE down to its heels cannot be having too many such officers who lose bladder control at the very thought of the enemy!

Had ‘A Sophist’ taken the trouble to get hold of a copy of the Ravaya of 13th August 2006, he would probably have not written what he wrote. He says that the government gave General Fonseka resources starving the rest of the economy, and that military spending has risen from 12% of all government expenditure in 2005 to 20% in 2009. Since he seems to have these figures at his finger tips (and I haven’t), could he also tell us how much we have spent fighting and appeasing (and in the meantime, strengthening) the LTTE for three decades, and compare that amount with what we have spent on Eelam War 4 which has (as even the peace lobby admits) virtually, decimated the LTTE militarily in less than three years?

In today’s (30th January) editorial, The Island editor points out that the extent of territory that came under LTTE control (and was described as a de facto state even by the then World Bank Chief in Sri Lanka) at the time it set the spark for Eelam War 4 was about 15,000 sq.km. which is almost one-fourth the total land area of Sri Lanka. Since it has already shrunk to about 300 sq. km., I would welcome my compatriot with Greek origins to tell us whether this has been too bad ‘a return to investment’!

Pericles