Buddhika Jayamaha

Buddhika Jayamaha, described as a U.S. Army Specialist, co-authored the August 19, 2007, New York Times Op-Ed "The Iraq war as we see it."

The IraqSlogger comments that the article, written by "Spc. Buddhika Jayamaha, Sgt. Wesley D. Smith, Sgt. Jeremy Roebuck, Sgt. Omar Mora, Sgt. Edward Sandmeier, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray and Staff Sgt. Jeremy A. Murphy of the 82nd Airborne Division are all at the tail end of a 15-month deployment 'soon heading back home,' and speak from what they saw with their own eyes", is "devastating in its understatement and restrained tone" and "reads like a Brookings white paper (or a military report, for that matter.)."


 * Note that, on September 10, 2007, Yance Gray and Omar Mora were among "seven American troops killed near Baghdad in vehicle rollover accident."

Quotes
"Everyone seems 'gong ho' about restoring democracy. Yet they forget, democracy is not an end in itself that ought to be upheld at all costs. It is the conventional norm that a 'democratic system of governance is the least evil'. Yet, if democratic systems are used by opportunistic politicians to come to power and enrich themselves disregarding their responsibilities as Bhutto & Shariff did, it's definitely time they try other means to restore order, stability and revive the economy."&mdash;Response by Buddhika Jayamaha, October 5, 1999, to BBC Online Network talking point "Should the world isolate Pakistan?"

Published works

 * Shale Horowitz and Buddhika Jayamaha, Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil Ethnic Conflict, in Karl DeRouen and Uk Heo, eds., "Civil Wars of the World," ABC-CLIO, Inc. (New York), January 2007.

Also see

 * Operation Iraqi Freedom: Year Five
 * Vets for Freedom