Rudyard Kipling"
“When 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 soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It 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."
Malaysiakini : Authorities at the venues who did not give reasons for their
cancellations obviously preferred silence to saying something that would
only give the spiral of expostulation and reply a nudge.
This would open the floodgates to a back-and-forth that would lead to nowhere.
Instead of taking their circumspection as a cue, Mahathir came out swinging at Anwar.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim
He branded Anwar a “dictator”, saying the current PM is more oppressive towards the Malays than the British colonials had been.
Anwar’s defence against Mahathir’s brickbats gained support from an unexpected quarter.
Former
prime minister Najib Abdul Razak weighed in with a Facebook posting
that pointed out the irony in Mahathir’s branding of Anwar as a
dictator.
Najib’s criticism was of the “see who is calling the kettle black” variety.
“Mr ISA calling others a dictator” chimed in the now-jailed former PM from his eyrie in Kajang Prison.
Najib
was reminding the public that someone like Mahathir. who had used the
now-rescinded colonial-era law, the Internal Security Act, to detain
more than a hundred politicians and social activists during his time as
prime minister, has to have much gall to accuse Anwar of being a
dictator.
Jailed former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak
Mahathir
cannot hope to win his battle of one-upmanship with Anwar, given the
range of critics of him and what he had done during his two stints as
PM.
He can’t win, not when he has detractors like PKR MP Hassan
Karim, who has raised the legitimate query of whether Mahathir, when he
was PM, was more interested in helping his cronies than the Malays.
Pundits
speculate that Mahathir’s motive, in his current public joust with
Anwar, is to create a distraction from what he anticipates is coming
around the corner for him – the scrutiny by the authorities of the
wealth acquired by his family.
They say the reason Mahathir has long feared Anwar’s rise to the
premiership is precisely because he expects this scrutiny once Anwar
reaches the top post.
The news that the MACC has already summoned
for questioning a former top cabinet minister over ownership of large
sums of money in an offshore financial haven is signal enough that that
scrutiny is in the works.
Arousing Malay discontent against Anwar
Knowing
his pre-emptive approach to danger, Mahathir is now busying himself
arousing Malay discontent against Anwar, thus hoping to derail the
reckoning that’s coming for him.
Even his worst critics would not
decline to give Mahathir credit for striving – in his tenth decade in
life – in pursuit of his aims.
There is something admirable about
someone in his nineties persisting in the belief that salvation is for
those who never cease to strive.
But there is also something about knowing there is a season to everything in life, including a time to recognise when to quit.
Failure to recognise this wisdom risks making one a crashing bore.
