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MAHINDA Rajapakse, Sri Lanka's President, has done what no Western leader has so far done. He has inflicted a devastating, presumably final, defeat on a terrorist organisation. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have been militarily crushed and its leadership killed.

The Tamil Tigers' quarter century of rebellion and terrorism is at an end.

What did it achieve?

The Tigers will be remembered for their savagery and their cruelty. They pioneered suicide bombing. They pioneered child soldiers. They used human shields. They used children as suicide terrorists. They murdered not only their opponents in the Sri Lankan Government or security forces, they also murdered alternative Tamil leaders, especially moderates who rejected their terrorist...