Robert O.Blake the US Assistant Secretary of State is no politician, nor is he a good diplomat. He is completely a stranger to the notion of nation building. He only brings disrepute to the President Barrack Obama. It was not the President Barrack Obama who selected him, he was the choice of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton also has strange political concepts. It was she who said during her Presidential election campaign that, “ … you cannot lump all terrorists together …”. With that type of lopsided views of the US Secretary of State, we cannot expect any thing more from her Assistant Secretary.
However we know a little more about Robert O’Blake having had him as the US Ambassador of the Bush Administration during the height of terrorism in Sri Lanka. He was no great help to Sri Lanka government. He interfered into the internal affairs of Sri Lanka becoming a defender of terrorists along with the Norwegian, the British and the German Ambassadors.
Fortunately we had an astute Statesman in our President Mahinda Rajapakse who did not give into these “boys” of the west. O’Blake was parroting that military operation is not the solution for terrorism and insisted on coming to a peace settlement with the terrorists. He became intolerable when he went to the Tamil Nadu State to “proclaim” that the Government of Sri Lanka is following a wrong path with its military operations to end terrorism, which was adding fuel to the fire in Tamilnadu which was determined to put Sri Lanka politically ablaze to save the terrorists.
Hillary Clinton in recruiting Robert O’Blake as the Assistant Secretary was following different objectives from that of the President Barrack Obama. Hillary Clinton has lost her dynamism in foreign affairs and is at a tangent with President Obama’s political views, it is no wonder with her wrong choice of Assistant Secretaries such as Robert O Blake.
The President Obama who wants friendly contact with all nations, has only built up his “friendly” contact with the big Western Nations, conveniently leaving out many of the developing countries in the fringe. Even his speech writers who depend on the Assistant Secretaries like O’Blake do not give importance to the developing nations allowing the President in his speeches to pontificate on respect to democracy and human rights to the developing countries, as if America is a “Mr.Clean”.
Sri Lanka had rightly used the military solution to fight against terrorism and has eliminated it, unless people like Robert Blake will rekindle terrorism in Sri Lanka with their unsolicited opinions on ethnic problem in Sri Lanka of which the Sri Lankans and the President of Sri Lanka are fully aware and do not require their advice on the matter.
Robert o’Blake had said according to a report in the ColmboPage News Desk that “Sri Lanka must investigate and ensure justice for the war crimes and serious violations of international humanitarian law that human rights and other groups allege occurred in the final stages of the conflict…..”
What is Robert O’Blake other than an American Bureaucrat to tell Sri Lanka what it should do ? His only qualification is being a white Assistant Secretary of Hillary Clinton’s State Department. He should know better having been in Sri Lanka as the American Ambassador of the Bush Administration that the Sri Lanka Army is much more disciplined and of a high moral standard than that of the American Army in Iraq.
Robert O’Blake perhaps is not aware of the American Torture camp of Abu Ghraib where the prisoners of war of Iraq were treated like animals and such tortures were carried out with the knowledge of the American State Department covering up the dirt casting the blanket of responsibility for the torture upon Janis Karpinski the head of the prison camp.
Fernado Botero the Colombian artist utterly disgusted with the horrors of the torture camps of Abu Ghraib did the famous series of paintings depicting torture in Abu Ghraib (http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2008/winter/botero-abu-ghraib/)
Hence it is not the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka that should be taken to a Tribunal of War Crimes , but the American Government which made the Commander Janis Karpinski an escape goat of the scandalous affair stigma of which would for ever be attached to the Bush Administration.
Therefore with these horrors in the minds of the Americans, when Hillary Clinton said that “… rape as a tactic of war has been and is still used in war zones across the world such as Bosnia, Burma, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad and Burundi “, she was not speaking as a responsible member of the President Barrack Obama’s Administration. With the memory of what happened in Abu Gharaib and the Guantanmo Bay Detention Camps, Hillary Clinton should have been more cautious in making drastic statements of the sort.
If Robert O’Blake wants to see the immorality of the American Army and using rape to humiliate the people of Iraq, he should see the TamilNet.tv. TamilNet is after all the web site that provides information and statistics to O’Blake , Amnesty International, Navi Pillai of the UNHRC, Bank Ki Moon and perhaps to his panel of investigators to bring accusations against the Government and the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka. These pictures will educate them on the torture , violation of human rights and rape by American Soldiers in Iraq. (http://www.tamilnet.tv/news/2009/123583/us-troops-rape-iraqi-girl/)
The Sri Lanka Army maintained a high moral standard, disciplined and respectful of the old and young women terrorists and IDPs though the UK Channel 4 did its best to accuse our army for immorality, and cold murder.
This US Assistant Secretary of State Robert O Blakes really takes himself for some sort of a Feudal Lord demanding the Government of Sri Lanka what it should do after the end of terrorism.
He says, "It will now be important for the Government to work with the Tamil community to organize local and Provincial Council elections as soon as possible so that a new, freely elected indigenous leadership can emerge in the North for the first time in almost thirty years."
What does he know about the people of Sri Lanka having served as the American Ambassador ? He cannot assume that he knows every thing about our country and the aspirations of its people. It is better he reads what the President Mahinda Rajapakse said in his speech to the UNGA on the 23 September,2010, to get an idea of what calibre the President is made, and whether he really needs O Blake’s advice .
Speaking to the UN General Assembly the President of Sri Lanka said: “…Those who observing from afar, suggested that the Sri Lankan government should have conceded to the demands of the terrorists, need to be reminded that terror is terror, whatever mask it wears and however it is packaged. To all those, I say this. My responsibility is to the entire nation. My responsibility is to the lives of millions of men, women and children, and those yet to be born. My responsibility is to the peace and prosperity of the nation and the right to a peaceful life for all who live there.”
Mark his words Robert O Blake, there is nothing our President Mahinda Rajapakse has to learn from you to do what is expected of him by his people, in the North, South, West or the East of Sri Lanka. He added that , “…..A great deal has been said by those beyond our borders about our Tamil community. Let me be clear, no nation on earth can wish Sri Lanka’s Tamil community more good fortune than Sri Lanka itself…”
There is nothing Robert Blake could stand up in a rostrum speaking to what ever audience tell, what the President and the Government of Sri Lanka do not know . If he wants to claim credit from the World Affairs Council in San Diago, where he was speech making, he may go ahead with his “crap”, but what matters to Sri Lanka is what is its own policy to wards itself, which is laid down in the Mahinda Chintanaya the election manifesto of the President.
Robert Blake had also said that, "Having defeated one of the most murderous terrorist groups in the world, President Rajapaksa now has an historic opportunity to build a tolerant, multi-ethnic democracy in Sri Lanka that will bring lasting peace and unprecedented prosperity," I think if he has studied the political ideology of his President Barrack Obama he would not refer to multi ethnicity of Sri Lanka.
The President Barrack Obama showed the myth of ethnicity making a nation of all Americans no matter their colour, religion or cultural back ground, though a greater responsibility to the American Indians is lost in flowery rhetoric In Sri Lank the effort is to set aside the separateness of ethnic groups, making a nation respectful of each others religious and cultural difference. Hence there would be no difference of the status of the people in the North, South, West or East other than being Sri Lankans as a whole.
Blake had said that he has a special attachment to Sri Lanka as he has served as Ambassador for three years from 2006 and witnessed the resumption and end of the conflict. Since the end of the war he has returned to the island several times and seen a renewed sense of purpose among the people. That Mr. Blake is because, “ no nation on earth can wish Sri Lanka’s Tamil Community more good fortune than Sri Lanka itself.”
What Robert Blake can do if he wants to be a progressive Assistant Secretary of State in Asia is to make President Barrack Obama a popular American President in Asia , without allowing him to hold on to narrow “we American” attitude, and open himself not to pontificate to developing nations about democracy and human rights, but to give them a hand to rise above their present Lower in come , or Middle Income Status to vie with developed Nations of the world.
The U.S. and other Countries should contribute for the development of Sri Lanka without separating Sri Lanka into blocks- the North, the East, and the South, unconditionally, and generously transferring both financial and technological know how.
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