Effectiveness of endless artillery bombings

We had touched upon this topic in one of the comments recently, but would like to discuss it here for others to consider. The Sri Lankan military has claimed for the last month that there are only 500 LTTE fighters left in the Vanni. Along with these fighters are around 200,000 Tamil civilians. The ratio of LTTE to civilians would be 0.25% (a quarter of a percent). Thus the number of LTTE fighters killed by the relentless artillerly bombing can be estimated by multiplying the number of civilian casualties by 0.0025. We have estimates that there have been 2,000 civilians killed in artillerly strikes in the last one month. So the number of LTTE fighters killed by these relentless artillerly strikes in the same period is roughly 5 people (2,000 x 0.0025). Think for a minute if this seems to be an acceptable method to fight "terrorists". Do you think it is worth killing 2,000 helpless civilians in exchange for killing 5 LTTE fighters? What this shows is that the nonstop bombing for the last one month has done virtually nothing to the LTTE, but has devastated the civilian population.

For the sake of argument, let us accept everything that the Sri Lankan government says. The LTTE are "terrorists" who have taken 200,000 civilians as hostages to use as human shields. How would civilized countries go about freeing those 200,000 civilians and defeating the 500 terrorists? I don't think there is a single country in the world that would decide to relentlessly bomb the civilian hostages in an attempt that would result in only killing 5 terrorists. Mathematically it is proven that the bombings did nothing to the LTTE. The only victims of the artillerly barrage were the civilians, whom the government was pretending to "save".

The fact that the government was willing to kill 2,000 civilians in exchange for nothing accomplished against the LTTE shows that they want to punish the civilians for having lived in LTTE controlled territory for the last 10 years. If al qaeda terrorists had taken 200,000 hostages in New York, could anyone even dream of the United States resorting to carpet bombing of New York to kill the terrorists? By doing that the terrorists have won, because they made you do their own work. No country in the world would have reacted in the way Sri Lanka has against their own civilians.

If there is any positive side to this terrible massacre it is that the entire world has now been exposed to the genocide committed by the Sri Lankan government. The quiet war that had no witnesses has now been brought before the world and everyone has seen the brutality of the Sinhalese. The Sri Lankan government may think that means nothing, because the international community is weak and spineless. But even the spineless international community has a limit, and as public opinion switches, they also dump the villains they themselves created and then pretend to be the protectors of justice.

What has the Sri Lankan government accomplished by this offensive? On the map it looks great, but for how long? What if they enter PTK and find another ghost town, with no signs of LTTE leaders, LTTE weapons, LTTE vehicles? After using 100,000 soldiers and everything at their disposal they supposedly surrounded the last rebel held area and held them within a 10 kilometer sized square, with absolutely no chance of escape. But when the army finally does enter this tiny parcel of land, what happens if they find nothing, just like the U.S. army found nothing in the Tora Bora caves after months of fighting?

The Sri Lankan army will be stretched throughout the North of the country with more than 100,000 soldiers, but for how long? How long can they maintain such huge numbers of soldiers in the North while simultaneously dealing with guerilla attacks from unknown directions. The Sri Lankan army will have accomplished absolutely nothing by this offensive. On the contrary, they have revealed to the world their genocidal intent, created an entire generation of enemies from amongst the Tamil civilians they bombed, and stretched their military resources beyond their abilities to maintain. Though they may win a battle, they will have lost the war politically, economically and strategically. Time will be their greatest enemy. As the realities of the situation sink in, and the euphoric propaganda presses slowly squeek to a stop, the people in the South will realize that the great "liberating victory" they were promised, that cost 20,000 Sri Lankan soldier's lives, was nothing but propaganda to ensure a win at the elections.

Sri Lanka has now positioned itself in a very vulnerable position. If after entering PTK they find nothing and the war continues, the world will now begin to side against them and their genocidal mayhem. With the economy on the brink of collapse, an over stretched military accomplishing "nothing" is the very last thing they need to keep their country together. The government leaders will insist it was all necessary to "save the country". The killing of thousands of civilians, and displacement of hundreds of thousands was all in the interest of the country, because, after all, they did managed to kill 5 LTTE "terrorists" in the process.