A month or so ago the Sri Lankan army cornered the remnants of the rebel Tamil Tigers and killed them all. Various and sundry Western voices expressed dismay, exclaiming that by killing them they left no one to negotiate with. A spokeswoman for Chatham House, a British NGO, was particularly upset that the Sri Lankan army brutally ended the forty year war with the even more brutal Tamil Tigers by doing it the old fashioned way, by killing them, and expressed their outrage in no uncertain terms. I have thought about this strange way of thinking, and have come to a reluctant conclusion. It seems wars are no longer to be won, but negotiated into a kind of perpetual conflict, in which neither side is defeated, and the casualty count keeps climbing, despite the valiant efforts by such as Chatham House to ameliorate the suffering.

 

 

Thank God there were no NGOs

Around in Patton’s day

For they’d have tried him, goodness knows

For getting in the way

Of all good Germans whom they felt

Would likely stop the war

And all good Nazis would be dealt

With kindly, as before

But no, George Patton told his men

The enemy must die

So his Third Army figured then

That Generals do not lie

They cranked up all their Shermans

And in weather bleak and fine

They killed their share of Germans

And they cracked the Siegfried line

So Hodges, Simpson, George and Ike

Killed Germans by the score

They did what NGOs don’t like

They went and won the war

But not today, for goodness sake

The New York Times would frown

If someone on our side would take

The chance to mow them down

And turn his guns on men who try

To kill us every day

It’s not for us to reason why

It’s just for us to pay

The price in blood the left insists

Is penance for our sins

And they would have us slash our wrists

And cheer when bad guy wins