Why we fight

In any conflict - be it between nations, peoples, organisations, whatever - there is always a level of propaganda and demagoguery involved. I'm sure you have heard at least SOME of these ones..

• We're fighting for our rights, our freedoms
• We are fighting to bring democracy to these poor people
• We're fighting to maintain our territorial integrity
• We're fighting, comrade, to bring the glories of communism to the people

But have you ever asked yourself what we are REALLY fighting for? Or why ANYONE fights? Maybe some of the truths that you hear would not be so pleasant then.

• We're fighting so that the politicians can have their kids in school in the US or UK

  It is a known fact that Prabhakaran's kids and many other minister's, prime minister's, presidents and various other politicians' kids are in various western countries. Safe and sound, far away from any fighting. They go to school, they have a good time. Meanwhile, kids from the border villages are dying. Poor kids, who have joined into a fight they have no stake in. Drawn in by demagoguery, promises of a better life, a thirst for revenge, a feeling they are doing the "right thing", forced in by threats and coercion, why they fight doesn't matter. The fact remains that they are fighting while those who send them off to fight are having a good time

• We are fighting for power

  Nothing gives a politician a hardon like knowing that he has power. Why do you think they destroyed the civil services commission, and the police commission? You WANT to have people coming to you, begging and pleading with you to do something for them. One thing I remember quite well was Gamini Lokuge sitting in his office distributing liquor licences. It was both frightening and fascinating. There he was, not quite so corpulent as Jabba the Hutt, but the odor of corruption was the same. There are possibly many in that same vein over in the north too. People whose only goal in life is to make up for a lack of power by grabbing power from someone else. And if money and power are the ultimate aphrodisiacs, imagine what kind of power the ability to send someone to their deaths is. I think you get bonus points if they not only go willingly, but also line up to go

  But this is not the only power that exists. Let us not forget the power that comes from governing. The LTTE and the LKGOV are both fighting for one thing. The right to control the northern and eastern province, and by extension the people who live there. They are just a bone that is being fought over by two dogs, and at the end of the day, no matter who wins, the bone will get chewed on

• We're fighting for oil

  Now this may seem like a direct stab at the Americans. After all they have a long tradition for exchanging "democracy" for oil. But this is becoming a part of the dotelkay mindset as well. There is reason to believe that there is oil available under the eastern coast. If this were the case, with the rising cost of oil, dotelkay would be a very strong financial and global position. It is one of the last untapped oil resources in the world.

  But it doesn't matter if it doesn't exist. The perception IS the reality. And that is enough for both sides to start cutting deals with various nations in order to get what they want. Whether the dotelkay populace will see any of that money except for what falls to the ground on the way to the swiss coffers is debatable.

• We're fighting for money

  From the arms buyers in the army who charge as much as 60% in commissions, to the politicians who approve the deals in exchange for a cut. From the "tax collectors" who come and tell you that if you don't cough up some "donations" you and your loved ones will not be safe to the bag men who transfer the cash to the necessary locations. The LTTE, the LKGOV, the private sector, the middle men, the "facilitators", they are all here to make money. In the US and other countries, its called the "military industrial complex", the wonderful people who charge USD900 for a hammer and USD2500 for a toilet seat. The ones who push governments to buying newer and better (ok maybe not better) hardware. That topples governments and countries for their own profit.

  They all want to make money. The guys who started the Access company here in dotelkay were middlemen in the arms trade. Now they are everywhere. They made a lot of money, and made a lot of other people very prosperous in the process. Does anyone actually believe that the millions that were seized from Ratwatte's account was his own money? Or that it was more than a drop in the bucket he collected as Minister of Defence?

  The war stopped in 2002 because the country was broke. We ran out of money. The LTTE stopped fighting because there was too much heat on them from outside. Even now, the A9 is closed in order to deny revenue (esimated at LKR3,000,000) to the LTTE. It is hard to fight a war when there is no money for bullets.

  But there is always money for commissions.

And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? We fight for our politicians and our demagogues. We fight for the priests and warmongers who are so willing to attack a peace rally made up of civillians, but are not willing to go to the front. We are fighting for the wonderful people who say, "yes we should fight, and we should hit them hard, take it all the way to Kilinochchi. Oh me? No I couldn't join the army, if all of us did that who would guard the south?" We are fighting for those who say, "if Eelam were granted, Jaffna would become the Singapore of South Asia. No, no, I wouldn't be able to leave my job and my life here in Canada, but I think it would be wonderful for those who do go back."

Yes, i have heard both statements. It has always been the case, old men send the young to die. The rich send the poor to die. The pragmatists send the idealists to die. Or worse, to come back crippled either on the inside or the outside. Remember folks, the one who is shouting "forward! to death or glory" is the one behind the rock and wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet. There is an important word in that phrase and it is not "glory".

General Patton once said, "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." Short, pithy, and to the point. But it can be taken another way too. We are working at winning the war. But we're not dying for our country. We're making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country. The shame of it is, it is also ours.