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."
Stop using the 'deep state' as an excuse for inaction - Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Malaysiakini : āAlmost all people are hypnotics. The proper authority saw to it that
the proper belief should be induced, and the people believed properly.ā
ā Charles Fort
Foreign Affairs Minister Saifuddin Abdullahās (photo, above)
warning that the ādeep stateā is out to undermine Pakatan Harapanās
reform efforts should be taken seriously but not for the reasons
Harapanās partisans think. Here is the thing, though. Is there a 'deep
state' in the form that Saifuddin is referring to? Not exactly. In an article
justifying Mahthirās withdrawal from the Rome statute, I wrote that
Saifuddin was right in that the 'deep state' was stymieing efforts for
reform.
Rereading
the piece, I made the mistake of legitimising the use of the term 'deep
state' because it neatly fit my use of the term 'deep Islamic state' to
describe the anti-democratic elements within the government whose
agenda was to realise a theocratic state.
The 'deep Islamic state'
benefits when people conflate it with something as nebulous as the
'deep state' (like I did) because it allows them to operate in an
atmosphere where attention is diverted from the Islamisation process ā
knowingly or unknowingly ā propagated by government apparatchiks and
muddies the discourse when it comes to race and religion in this
country.
The 'deep Islamic state' is non-partisan. It uses proxies
from both coalitions ā BN and Harapan ā whose agenda is to realise a
new Islamic project. They have been in the system for decades and
operate without oversight because the political apparatus has been
involved in maintaining hegemonic control and because we have no
independent institutions that offer any kind of oversight or curtails
political power.
The
'deep Islamic state' is a result of the vast religious bureaucracy, the
doctrinal teachings of propaganda endeavours like the Biro Tatanegara
(BTN), the religious education system and foreign influence either
through education or experience in foreign theatres of war.
What
we are talking about here are 'travellers' who enjoy the support either
knowingly or unknowingly of the Malay/Muslim political apparatus in this
country, who believe they are setting the religious agenda but in
reality, are being manipulated by anti-democratic elements with agendas
of their own.
People often write jokingly of the corruption in the
religious bureaucracy. What people may not understand is that these
'travellers' use corruption as a means to hide greater malfeasance
through the disbursement of funds and no doubt dutifully compile
compromising material on various religious figures.
Please do not
confuse this element with the Umno/PAS opposition. The 'deep Islamic
state' gets support from all political parties. Whenever a nanny state
policy is injected into society, what it does is soften the public into
complying with anything the government dishes out to them most often in
the guise of partisan policymaking.
The nexus between the
political apparatus and the 'deep Islamic state' is why I argued that
Harapan is having so many problems (or so they claim) finding out what
happened to the abducted Raymond Koh and Amri Che Mat. There is a state
within a state ā a religious one ā acting without oversight and
certainly which includes members of the state security apparatus.
One
of the numerous ways they benefit is when non-Malay political
operatives normalise anti-democratic behaviour. This was essentially
what my last article
was about. Whenever non-Muslim political operatives attempt to play the
religious game, they are essentially playing a game rigged by the deep
Islamic state which also benefits the Malay political apparatus in this
country.
These days Harapan always blames the 'deep state' for
every incompetent move they make. Agents provocateurs within the
government, paid proxies, propaganda and the numerous other stratagems
designed to sway public opinion are not the sole provinces of a 'deep
state'. These methods are common political tools used by political
operatives to sustain power.
When it comes to reforms purportedly
disrupted by 'the deep state', can Saifuddin list the support it
received from Harapanās Malay political operatives? In other words, did
Harapanās Malay political operatives support these initiatives and how
much campaigning did they do, to counter the propaganda against the
Harapan government by Umno/PAS?
Saifuddin
nearly gets to the root of the problem when he says Harapan has to come
up with a counter-narrative. I say nearly gets there because what
Saifudin fails to realise is that you canāt have a counter-narrative as
long as there are Malay/Muslim political operativesā claims that racial
and religious superiority are embedded in the constitution of Malaysia.
The
folks on the other side are not working for the 'deep state' but rather
playing the same game that all mainstream political parties in Malaysia
play. And the 'deep Islamic state' benefits from this. It
benefits when the state defines what is Islamic narrowly. It benefits
when the state has power over the majority in this country and exercises
its power through the religious bureaucracy. It benefits when the
narratives of Malay Muslim political operatives are similar to the
agenda of the deep Islamic state.
Saifuddin claims that the
outrage from the 'deep state' seems fake. How does this outrage differ
from Malays who are told their rights need to be protected by
Malay-based parties and that their religion is under siege? When
Harapanās religious czar directs the religious bureaucracy to
investigate a dehijabing forum, is the outrage generated by the deep
state or is it genuine? How can you tell?
Have you noticed that
whenever Harapan backtracks on positions concerning human rights, they
always claim that the public needs more education on the subject? Yet
when they create laws that restrict free speech or deepen the fissures
when it comes to religion - they assume Malaysians are educated enough
to understand why these laws are needed. The problem with
illogical arguments is not that they come from the 'deep state' but
rather they form the basis of the political discourse in this country.
In what other country do arguments of racial and religious superiority
taken seriously as a means to maintain stability either in the form of
the social contract or Bangsa Malaysia.
As long as Harapan lacks
the political will to carry out reforms, they will always blame this
imaginary 'deep state'. The problem with not carrying out reforms is
that all it does is embolden the 'deep Islamic state'.
In order to take on these anti-democratic forces in this country, Harapan has to commit
to serious reforms, many of which would lay bare the toxic confluence
of religious, racial, royal and corporate power in this country.