Thursday, March 5, 2009

Truth and the Tigers

For all their squalling, the Tigers don't deserve our sympathy,
and it's shameless of them to demand it.
John Thompson, National Post
Published: Thursday, March 05, 2009

Throughout the countries that shelter the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, the Tigers' activists are desperately trying to win some reprieve for the last LTTE guerrilla force trapped in Sri Lanka. The problem is that the Tamil Tigers began as a terrorist group; and the two main traits of terrorists are deception and atrocity.

Terrorists try to convince both themselves and a wider audience that their cause is righteous. It seldom is. Reformers like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Lech Walesa proved that non-violent protest works.

Terrorists are people who prefer violence; their first targets are often the aspiring King-and Walesa-types who would lead the terrorists' preferred audience along a gentler path. Prabhakaran, the Tiger Supremo, began his career by murdering a federalist Tamil politician who preferred to work within the political system.

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE
John Thompson is president of the Mackenzie Institute, a Toronto-based research group focused on organized violence and political instability.

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