Did they or didn't they and what if they did?
It is this same arrogance that allows the Americans to violate Sri Lanka's or any other country's airspace with impunity.
by Stewart Sloan
(August 10, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) Recent reports in the Sri Lankan press have revealed that American airplanes entered the territorial airspace of Sri Lanka. Interestingly this has been both denied and confirmed by the government who are very good at first denying things and latter admitting to them. This comes in light of the fact that this same government is now admitting that civilians were killed in the final stages of the war against the LTTE. However, the intrusion into Sri Lankan airspace has been empathically denied by the US navy.
I don't know who I feel sorry for the most in this instance; the sovereignty of Sri Lanka has possibly been violated by the arrogance of a mightier nation. Let's face it: there is more destructive fire power in the USS Ronald Reagan, the aircraft carrier thought to be involved, than the entire Sri Lankan military apparatus. So, the fact remains, if the US did violate Sri Lankan airspace, what exactly is Sri Lanka going to do about it?
If the Americans are known for anything it is their pure, unadulterated arrogance. They come and go as they please which is blatantly evident by their actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Three years ago in Hong Kong a plain clothed American tried to leave the territory with a loaded ammunition clip in his possession. The carrying of any weaponry, including self defense items such as pepper spray is strictly controlled, and therefore this man was arrested and held. He was, he announced, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI is known to be a domestic institution with no jurisdiction outside the continental USA, so by what right or authority was this fellow carrying a loaded clip. The immigration officers handed him over the police who held him while communications flew back and forth to the American Consulate General. They, with incredible arrogance announced that he was, in fact, an FBI agent and that they should release him IMMEDIATELY! No apology or explanation was received regarding the incident.
It is this same arrogance that allows the Americans to violate Sri Lanka's or any other country's airspace with impunity.
Whether they did or not one more thing is interesting. The Americans are displaying the very same arrogance shown by Mahinda Rajapakse and his brother, who, two years ago denied that any civilians were killed during the final stages of the war and then recently, very calmly announced that, perhaps, some might have been killed but that this amounted to nothing more collateral damage. No apology or explanation for this sudden turnabout was offered; they just offered it up and demanded that the people of Sri Lanka and the international community accept it. Interestingly, collateral damage is of course something else that the Americans know all about as in the first Gulf war more British servicemen were killed by American friendly fire than by the Iraqis themselves.
So on the arrogance front, it's one point to the Rajapakses' and one hundred and one to the Americans!
After all, who is going to argue with the USS Ronald Reagan?
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