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."
Icerd and the false promise of middle Malaysia - Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Saturday, November 24, 2018
The Loss of Scrotal Fortitude by the Mahathir led Pakatan Harapan Government, in layman's terms , it means that they lost their balls!!
Malaysiakini : I said the old devils are at it again, Who knows what theyāll do, And itās right now like it was back then, The old devils are at it again. ā William Elliot Whitmore, āOld Devilsā
COMMENT | In an interview, DAPās Lim Guan Eng was reported
to have said āthe situation needed to be pacified, it should not stop
people from continuing to express their views on Icerd (International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination).ā
Really? So, let me get this straight. DAP, which has not given its official stand on the ratification of Icerd, wants people to express their views on this issue? DAP,
who routinely mocks MCA for being subservient to Umno, wants people to
express their views even though it has not declared its own position on
the issue after the cabinet decided (by consensus) not to ratify Icerd?
DAP,
the purveyors of the Bangsa Malaysia Kool-Aid, wants people to express
their views, even though it has warned the Chinese community (and
others) to be wary until after the Dec 8 anti-Icerd celebration? So,
the finance minister of this country, who has made these tirades about
speaking the 'truth' even though it is economically or politically
disadvantageous to do so, suddenly seems to have lost his ability to
speak when it comes to the issue of Icerd.
But donāt worry folks,
I am sure you will speak up on this issue, even when Lim, if asked to
comment, will just deflect, leaving you holding the bag. Another DAP leader, Liew Chin Tong (photo), says this country needs a vision which highlights the virtue of the middle ground. When
politicians babble on about the middle ground, what they forget to tell
you is that it is contextual. Here in this country, when I talk to
people about what they think the middle ground is, they speak of middle
Malaysia with two definitions.
The
first is the social contract. It is not a real document but rather it
is an unspoken understanding. The middle ground is that there are
policies and ideologies in place that benefit the majority, and as long
as minorities can exist comfortably, albeit with limited freedoms, they
must not question the inequalities of the system, even if that system
which claims to āupliftā the majority is in reality detrimental to the
community.
The second definition was borne out of the political
turmoil that split the Malay community when Anwar Ibrahim was ejected
from the Umno paradise. Or at least, thatās the narrative that we are
most familiar with. This middle ground is defined by concepts
like equality, secularism and numerous other progressive ideas
championed by the urban educated electorate.
So when people talk
of Bangsa Malaysia for instance, they are really talking about the idea
that everyone is equal and the aspirations to certain fundamental
freedoms that people in other countries take for granted. Hereās
the thing though, Icerd was that vision of a middle ground that Pakatan
Harapan claimed fidelity to. It is in their manifesto and the rhetoric
of the more outspoken members of its coalition.
Rational (Harapan-aligned) critics of Icerd did not make the argument
that the treaty would destroy the Malay community because they could
not point to anything that did that. What they argued was that
the ratification of Icerd would be politically disadvantageous ā or so
they claim ā and that the present government would lose its credentials
as protectors of race and religion. This neatly falls into the first
definition of the middle ground.
The reality is that
Icerd was a symbol and a declaration which is actually a baseline for
functional democracies for the second definition. The religious
far-right who oppose Icerd did so because they believed in the supremacy
of their race and religion. What Icerd did was to say everyone should
be equal.
Threats of violence work
By not ratifying Icerd, the government did two things. First,
it legitimised the views of people like PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang.
This really does not bother me. Hadi is the politically incorrect face
of Malay supremacy. As I said
earlier ā āThe funny thing is that state governments controlled by the
opposition bend over backwards to accommodate Muslimsā preoccupations
and have to continuously defend themselves against charges of racism and
yet the mainstream Malay establishment does not disavow someone like
Hadi.ā
Think of it this way. Has any Malay-Muslim Harapan
politician come out and say that Hadi is wrong when it comes to issues
of race and religion? Have any of these politicians offered an
antithetical view of Hadiās numerous toxic narratives?
Sure, some political operatives have made meek protestations and
gingerly attempted to offer a counterview, but nobody has had the
cojones to say Hadiās view of Islam is wrong. So I am not so
worried about the first point because the foundation of mainstream Malay
politics is racial supremacy, but what has happened over the years is
that mainstream Malay power structures have done a reasonable job in
balancing Malay and non-Malay expectations so we did not turn into just
another failed Islamic state. The second point is far more
dangerous. When Harapan rejected Icerd, they sent a message to the
religious far-right that their threats of violence work.
Now, some
would say, hasn't this always been the case? No, this time is different
because Harapan, which claimed to be a progressive force, caved in to
the religious far-right. This was not the Umno decades-long
hegemon playing to the gallery. This was a supposed multiracial
coalition telling the racial and religious far-right that they were
afraid to confront them even though they had federal power.
It
sent a signal that the Harapan government could be brought to its knees
when the issues of race and religion are used. The problem here is that
the racial and religious far-right could turn every issue into a
religious or racial issue and by attrition, bring down a
democratically-elected government.
If this sounds scary, it really
isnāt. What the Harapan government should do is determine which kind of
middle ground they want to occupy. This would mean jettisoning those
ideas which they have long promulgated to rile up the base. Chin
Tong is wrong when he talks about a non-Malay periphery electorate
wanting to fight fire with fire. What they want ā and I doubt they are a
periphery ā is for Harapan to occupy the second definition of the
middle ground. This puts them in conflict with those who view the first
definition as pragmatic and conducive to maintaining power in this
system.
Harapan, and the DAP specifically, has to find its scrotal
sac and define the middle ground even if it means acknowledging that
there is no new Malaysia, only a BN Redux.