The defeat of the Tamil Tigers

CNN:

The Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka said Sunday they have "decided to silence our guns" as government forces closed in on their last stronghold.

It is not the first time the rebels have called for an end to fighting when backed into a corner by the Sri Lankan military. But should they follow through on their announcement, the decision would potentially end a bloody 25-year civil war in the country.

"This battle has reached its bitter end," Selvarasa Pathmanathan, a spokesman for the rebels said in an "urgent statement" posted Sunday on Tamilnet.com, a pro-rebel Web site.

"It is our people who are dying now from bombs, shells, illness and hunger. We cannot permit any more harm to befall them. We remain with one last choice -- to remove the last weak excuse of the enemy for killing our people. We have decided to silence our guns," he said.

Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa is expected to announce that "military operations" against the Tiger rebels have ended in an address to the nation from Parliament on Tuesday, the government said Sunday.

The rebels -- formally known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) (LTTE) -- have fought for an independent state for minority Tamils in Sri Lanka since July 1983. As many as 70,000 people have been killed since the civil war began.

Government forces have trapped the remaining rebels in a small stretch of land in the north of the country -- and possibly thousands of civilians with them, an international aid worker in the country told CNN.

The civilians are "under intense fire" and "essentially on their own" in the area, which the government says contains only rebels, the aid worker said.

The Tigers themselves claim 25,000 civilians are dead or dying, a rebel identified as Col. Soosai said in a statement on Tamilnet.com.

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There is some irony in the Tigers concern for civilians since they have had no inhibitions in attacking them. They were the first to use human bomb attacks. For that reason alone, it is good to see their defeat and the defeat of their strategy and tactics.

But it is the defeat of their insurgency that is most relevant. For too long the Democrats have persisted in a position that insurgencies could not be defeated without genocide. That is one reason why the Tigers are trying to convince the world that one is taking place as they accept defeat. However, this insurgency was beaten by a determined effort that began and was inspired by the US reaction to 9-11. It was defeated militarily and not with any reconciliation efforts that had prolonged the conflict in the past. One of the myths of the left is that insurgencies cannot be defeated militarily. Some in the military also believe this myth, but as the Iraq war and the one in Sri Lanka show, the insurgents can be defeated.