Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
The compromised loyalty of civil service and armed forces - By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Malaysiakini : āMen are not corrupted by the exercise
of power or debased by the habit of obedience; but by the exercise of a
power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by obedience to a rule
which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.ā - Alexis de Tocqueville
COMMENT | Malaysiakini columnist Mariam Mokhtar wrote a great piece
about the narratives of the state of defending ābangsaā and āagamaā. I
just want to hone in on this paragraph - āThose in the civil service,
the police and the armed forces are mostly Malay. The cabinet members,
the GLC bosses and the heads of government departments are mostly Malay.
The majority of Malays benefit from educational scholarships,
affordable home purchases, business funding, or petrol station operating
licences.ā
This brings us to Public Service Department director-general Zainal Rahimās rejoinder to the civil service to remain āloyalā to the government and Perlis Menteri Besar Azlan Man chastising
retired armed forces personnel for āopposingā the government. Both
political statements are because loyalty is not derived so much from any
qualitative benefits that the government provides, but rather based on
race.
While non-Malays have to put up with Malay potentates who live off
their taxes but constantly remind them to be grateful, the majority of
the Malay polity are constantly reminded that they need the government
and hence have to remain loyal to the dominant Malay power structure. A
power structure which through social engineering and economic banditry
has ensured that the feudalistic system remains intact even if the idea
of a constitutional monarchy has been chipped away over the years by the
Umno hegemon, the latest being the National Security Council (NSC) Act.
Let us not kid ourselves. There is a big difference between the
propaganda aimed at the non-Malays and for the non-Malays, and the
propaganda for the Malay community and against those Malays who are seen
as rebelling against Umno rule. Senior Malay civil servants, retired or
still serving, can tell you comical stories of how the establishment
attempts to ensure compliance. This, of course, goes back to the days of
the old maverick.
While high-ranking (thinking) armed forces personnel, who have had
the benefit of tutelage under now-retired servicemen, cringe at the
moronic displays of vote-getting by the establishment, there are far too
many retired armed forces personnel who benefit from the largess of
Umno.
This is why when patriots like Brigadier-General (Rtd) Arshad Raji points out the corruption
and inequalities of the system (based on) years of service, the Umno
hegemon is taken aback. Not only has he been on the receiving end of
scurrilous attacks on his reputation, he has always been on the
receiving end of the right-wing Malay intelligentsia who view the armed
forces as the armed wing of a ruling party.
If you were to talk to the average wage earner in the civil service
or the armed forces, you would understand that even with all the
ābenefitsā they receive, they are still struggling. Here is a prime example of how the government spends so much on
ādefenceā but what the armed forces get is āthird world facilitiesā and
mockery from international military organisation they serve with ā
āFormer army deputy chief Lt-Gen (Rtd) Abdul Ghafir Abdul Hamid said
today the military camps were like āThird World facilitiesā that have
not been maintained and āwhen the men are asked to serve overseas, they
are mocked by the international forcesā.ā
And this was just five years ago. Does anyone really think that things have improved? Now some folks may wonder that if the wage earners of the state are
struggling, what more the average citizen - Malay and non-Malay - who do
not have the safety net provided by the state? If you are non-Malay,
you pay double when it comes to not having a security blanket.
A shift in voting patterns?
While the opposition rightly worries about the armed forces postal
votes and military base votes are suspect - that old Stalin rejoinder of
the people counting the votes are more important than the ones casting
their votes - the reality is that there are many people, those who have
left the armed forces or are in the process of leaving, who understand
that there is something very wrong with the way how this country is
governed.
Mind you, they are not too concerned about all those fancy principles
that opposition political parties like to throw about but what they do
understand is that their lives are affected by the way how this country
is run and no amount of pandering to race and religion can alleviate
their problems. The same applies to the civil service. One mid-level bureaucrat was
pissed off that the MACC was going after small fish when the sharks were
allowed to feed from the trough without any action from the state.
This, of course, was unfair to the "average" corrupt small fish but was
also demoralising to those civil servants who actually wanted to do
their job.
Furthermore, when political loyalties are based on the petty fiefdoms
aligned to greater power structures, the harassment of individuals
deemed unfriendly to the current regime and thus ripe for targeting has
agitated whole sections of the civil service waiting to express their
disdain at the ballot box or are sympathetic to opposition political
personalities wanting dirt on the current government. All this has
created a toxic atmosphere in the civil service, with people questioning
loyalties and allegiances.
This is not to say that race and religion are not a factor when it
comes to the Malay vote, only that the opposition may not have as much
to fear when it comes to the civil service and armed forces votes. While
the average citizen may still be prey to the gung-ho nationalism of
Umno, those within the bureaucracy, which is an important voting bloc,
may just surprise the Umno state.
This is the reason why the Umno hegemon is busy reminding Malays in
the civil service and the armed forces that they should be loyal to the
government. This is why a whole range of initiatives are mooted to
dissuade the civil service from voting for anyone other than Umno. However, all these promises amount to a hill of beans because if
anything, while the standard of the civil service has improved over the
years, the agitation brought by the class dialectic of the opposition,
the religious propaganda of PAS and the split in the Malay vote, has
made traditional vote banks open to opposition intrusion.
I, for one, would not be surprised if there were a shift in voting
patterns in the civil service and retired armed forces personnel.