Art of War, Amnesty International and Civilian Casualties.

First of all, If you live in Sri Lanka or in any other third world country with some sort of hideous military conflict, which all the third world countries could not afford to avoid, but if you have not read the book “Art of War” by Sun Tzu yet, I strongly recommend you to stop all your important work, such as reading this blog or having a haircut, and read the “Art of War” by Sun Tzu right now.

Looking at war in Sri Lanka and all other endless military campaigns all over the third world, I could not stop saying to myself “Art of War” is expired. At least it is expired in third world countries like ours. By the time Art of War written, anyone who secures the land, wins the war. But the time is changed now. We cannot win a war by simply gaining the power over the land. We need to get the seal of approval from western authorities, which we normally refer by the more appealing name of “International Community”. Thinking about this whole situation make me feel like writing an additional Chapter (14) to Art of War, which could have been very bad idea if I ever did. But I scrabble few lines just for my enjoyment, such as..

“If your men are ready to attack, if you know the ground is ready for victory, you are only half way to victory. But if your men are ready to attack, and if you enjoy the most romantic relationship with the international community, you are on the definite way to victory.”

“A good General delights the International community just like how an old man pleases his mistress.”

“Just like a good Pigeon tippler send his tamed birds and bring back more pigeons, send your tamped journalists to gain more of them. Shower them with money, gift and liquor. Organize your journalists inside the enemy territory, and use them to create controversy.”

After I wrote few of those sorts of lines, I had this vivid picture in my mind, Sun Tzu coming from his grave, shaking me by my arms, asking me “How come people like you never seen a battle, get a chance to have opinion about warfare? Since when, any idiot get chance to write anything on the internet?” Since I do not know answers to such questions, I stopped scrambling any further about Art of War.

So here we go with my usual blogging again.

After WWII, west gain military, financial and moral victory over rest of the world. West does not directly control us anymore, like how they used to do. But they keep the authority of approving or disapproving most important events in our life using deferent front organizations such United Nations.

It is quite a nice idea of having universal moral code when we engage in military conflict, so we can engage that in more civilize manner. That was our intention when we join UN, or at least that is what they told us. When we play football, we get FIFA to be the referee. When we engage in military campaigns, we get UN to be the referee. It was a nice simple idea.

But unfortunately things changed over the time. UN turns in to an obese woman on a wheelchair that happened to push and pull by few rich countries. Human rights and that sort of issues, outsourced in to third party organizations such as Amnesty International. Now those organizations have yellow and red cards and they get to be the referee when we play ball. That is not what we wished for. We wanted simple democratic transparent organization. But the world have funny way of treating third world countries.

Organizations like AI, are not structurally designed to be transparent or democratic institutes, UN at least still pretend to be one. Those organizations are openly funded and operated by individuals with specific interests. It is quite easy for anyone to buy out decision makers inside those organizations or appoint their own people. All you need is one or two wheelbarrow load of money. Then you get to openly buy the referee of the game. At this point, the whole ball game turns in to something ridiculous like World Wrestling Entertainment.

Been a referee is a challenging job. In the military ball game we play, referee must have good ground intelligence before making critical decisions, such as giving a yellow card. Unfortunately INGOs like Amnesty International, whom declares themselves as the umpire, do not have such capacity. They basically depend on news briefs, reporters and rumors. Occasionally they engage in short fact finding missions that they spend most of the time in star class hotels complaining about thread counts. Now at this point, we have an organization incompetent and more ridiculous than a WWE referee giving yellow cards as they wish, deciding who get to keep the lands that someone willing to die for. This situation worsens everything that we wish not.

Right now, if a good general wanted to win a war, not only he have to ignore Sun Tzu’s manual, he have to be the one who receive higher civilian casualties. If not, pretend like he receive civilian casualties by making false statements, or create civilian casualties by his own. We see this unfortunate situation quite well in Sri Lanka. We cannot blame GOSL or LTTE for this matter. They were forced by so call “international community” to score points by receiving civilian casualties in order to justify and win the war. It is not only natural they be tempted to artificially create civilian casualties, since the referee is so incompetent; it is also become a necessary tactic of war. This is not the kind of a situation we had in our mind. Sun Tzu never thought, a good general have to carry group of cinematographers when he go to battle like he is fighting for an Oscar.

But right now, presenting the opponent originates more civilian casualties by any means, one get to win the war and justify civilian casualties he makes. Nobody can avoid civilian casualties all together in a war. Not even NATO or US. But when such a terrible thing happen, it should not turn in to anybodies advantage and add a price tag to it. But people like Amnesty international and are likes, do just that. Even though how terrible it is, I like the warfare in Sun Tzu fashion. At least that way, a good general have a responsibility of protecting his own people, not scoring points by making them getting killed.

Disrespecting Your Religion. Part One – Where Your Morals come from?

First time when I heard the Carl Marx famous quote “Religion is the opium of the masses”, it makes me awfully angry. For my excuse, I was a teenager back then and just like any teenager, it didn’t take much to make me angry. I thought “if there is no religion, then where our moral come from? How arrogant Carl Marxx was”. I was actually felt insulted he (and his followers, including JVP back then) not believing in the same values that I have brought up with. My Religion is the ultimate good of all things.

But later I came across the question, are we good because of our religion?

When every time we talk about Sri Lanka, majority of people who happened to be Buddhist, bring up the impotency of Buddhist Culture we been having for past couple of thousand years and how that make Sri Lanka the wonderful country it is today and how terrible it used to be before Buddhism was introduced.

This is a common argument every religion make. Without their religion, the world will be immoral terrible place. And immediately after that statement, they claim the exclusive copyright of my morals. That is where fun starts. Some religions start to sell their moral value with discount prices while some give it away with numerous financial incentives. Some take more radical approach and fly planes in to buildings and that sort of things. While We Sri Lankans take kind of deferent approach; and typically use identity and cultural blackmailing, with occasional vandalism.

The story says when the son of Emperor Ashoka, Mahinda, introduced religion to Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan king, Tissa was chasing after a deer like a hungry dog. It is quite possible the king was engaged in recreational hunting that day, taking the advantage of moon light. But I don’t think the king was running after a deer quite desperately like the story tries to paint it out. I’m absolutely sure Tissa knew no humans able to outrun a deer and no hunter can shoot while running. So when next time a monk say this story, just before he go and have lunch with rice and curry chicken, I want to tell the monk, “no, it is not terribly immoral thing for a king to engage in recreational hunting”. After all King Tissa must be very athletic, with extra time on his hand and quite safe country for him to run around, which is the kind of moral I would desperately like to see in our current leaders.

The story does not mention anything immoral like killing first born babies, raping virgins, or killing children. So I assume, Sri Lankans were very intelligent and moral people even in the absence of Buddhism, and Buddhism have nothing to do with you not killing your neighbor or not raping your sister today.

Next comes the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments. After Jews follows Moses, his long difficult journey, Lord gave Moses the Ten human moral guidelines, at the Mount Sinai. Jew’s book was not good enough for Christians, so later they wrote down a deferent book, but regardless of the book, they all consider without those Lord’s guidelines; the whole world will be immoral terrible place. If that is the case, before Ten Commandments was given by the Lord, in the absent of religious moral guidelines, those followers of Moss’s should have been some sort of rapist, raping each other's daughters, killing their neighbors while performing adultery. But I do not believe possibly that is the case. If they were immoral in the absent of religious guidelines, none will be able to make that long difficult journey.

So it is impossible to buy the argument judaeo-christians are some sort of immoral group of people that we all have to be extremely careful of, because in the absence of their religious guidelines, they all may burst in to some sort of murders.

Not only Judaism, and Christianity, Islam also comes with good set of moral values. Respect your parents, do not kill your children, do not commit adultery, be honest, etc.. I do agree they are extremely good morals we all would like to seen in a person. I’m willing to bet my house on, in an absent of Quran, none of my Muslim friends will not turn in to some sort of immoral, child killing, dishonest adulteress. Because I know for sure they are not that sort of people. They all have sense of morality and responsibility by nature.

It is not only humorous, but also humiliating, when those religious leaders suggest our morals come from religions and in the absence of it, we all will turn in to immoral bunch. In reality, even those most extreme religious leaders, careful enough to pick most suitable teachings from their books and even after that, interpret according to current situation. As an example, no religious leader with a bit of a commonsense will not say anything remotely appealing to slavery or raping virgins, no matter how much of those are encouraged by their religions, because we are the society have better sense of morality than the one in those old religious books. There is nothing wrong with they pick and choose from their books and ignore large some of text in that process.. Matter of fact, I’m quite happy they do that.

Then where does moral come from?

Humans have very delicate physical body without any sort of inbuilt protection mechanism. We have no venom, no long teeth, and no long nails or no camouflage. But we do have advantage in large collective numbers with strong connection. We care for each other. We feel extremely uncomfortable in absence of other humans around us. We have empathy. We help others in danger. We try not to break away from our social pack. We know without the protection of the pack, we cannot survive in this world or any other. We do understand that. Also we understand for us to receive that protection and accept in to the pack, we have to follow set of social responsibilities, call morals.

As technology advances, our pack expands beyond families, countries and continent and we help and protect each other. Not only humans, now we know, we must care about environment too, for us to survive. That makes our moral values expand beyond human species, to other species and even in to every bit of nature.

Bottom line is, you did not jump over to your neighbor’s house today and kill the whole family not because your religion told you not to do so, because you are by nature a good human being.

In a future post, I will try to write, how religion (no matter what religon it is) could make you jump over to your neighbor’s house and kill the whole family tomorrow. Unitl then, be a good.