The Exception

Sri Lanka's government has had a time with the Tigers. Recently evicting several hundred from the capital city there, the government continues to be scorned by Western powers. Here's what their Defense Secretary said in response:

`We have to defend ourselves. I`m talking about terrorists. Anything is fair,` Gotabaya Rajapaksa told Reuters and the BBC. He said the United Nations agencies had been infiltrated and misled by the Liberation Tigers over 30 years.

Anything is fair? The exception that we've made of terrorism continues to swallow the rules we live by. Note the obvious complicity in a state of moral ambiguity:

`When the U.S. does operations, they say covert operations. When something is (done) in Sri Lanka, they call it abductions,` he added. `This is playing with the words.`

Playing with words and playing with the devil at the same time. The U.S. will continue to be isolated by this type of rhetoric unless we change course and adopt a comprehensive approach to fighting insurgents engaged in terrorist activity. We can't give in on the this. The battle is fought on the moral ground as much as it is fought on the hard ground and in the air.