For those who insist the Iraq War post-Saddam fight was a near-debacle that we've only won because we gambled, reflect on what a real civil war looked like:
Full-fledged war broke out in 1983 after the rebels killed 13 soldiers in an ambush, sparking anti-Tamil riots that human rights groups say killed as many as 2,000 people.
At the height of his power, Prabhakaran controlled a virtual country in the north that had its own border control, police force, tax system and law school. He commanded a rebel army of thousands backed by artillery, a navy and a nascent air force.
The Tigers also pioneered suicide bombers. Their troops, though outnumbered, were superior to the Sri Lankan troops. And the Sri Lankan army, surely inferior to Iraq's current army, did not have a powerful ally to help them (India helped for a short time, however, despite Indian Tamil sympathy for their brethren on Sri Lanka and initial help for the LTTE, losing 1,200 dead in the process) and basically had to win on their own.
The idea that our war in Iraq was unwinnable was always laughable:
When we look back at this war, will we really think that a 5-year struggle with casualties well under Vietnam rates was difficult in historical terms? I'm not dismissing over 4,000 American deaths, mind you. But these deaths did not prevent Americans from sustaining an all-volunteer military to wage it. Further, the Baathists, representing at most 20% of the Iraqi population, were actually defeated by the end of 2003. Who believed such a minority could not eventually be defeated?
In retrospect, we've beaten our multiple enemies inside Iraq in a very short time period indeed.
And I'd be surprised if the Sri Lankan war is really over. The civil war is over, to be sure, with the conquest of the last Tiger territory. Pure terror and insurgency could last for years more. Much depends on how much the Tamils leaned on the leadership of their dead LTTE commander. And it depends on how well the government can reach out to those Tamils unhappy but currently unwilling to fight or support resistance.
If Prabhakaran was as key as the press is saying, the war might really be over. But I'd be surprised. Wait a few months to see if the broken LTTE remnants regroup and initiate low-level resistance.
