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."
Malaysiakini : āItās in my nature,ā shrugged the scorpion.
This story is, of
course, an illustration of the viciousness of some people. It is a good
reminder that some things just donāt change.
For instance, some things like Mahathirās instinct to play the race card.
It manifests itself whenever he is out of favour with Malay voters and is desperate to get back in.
One can, perhaps, understand PAS president Abdul Hadi Awangās inclination to play the race and religion card.
It
comes with the turf of his ideological domain, though many would
dispute that by citing the universalism of his religionās values as
refutation.
PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang
Mahathirās continued reliance on the race card is something of an aberration, given his education.
He was the first of our prime ministers from the sciences; his predecessors were all from the humanities.
That
training presupposes a disposition to arrive at positions after
evaluation of the evidence, an empirical cast of mind thatās quick to
discard assumptions no longer valid or useful.
If there is
something about the obsoleteness of racism, it is that the horrors of
the whole of the 20th century were ample proof of the destructiveness of
it as an instrument of public policy.
And yet we find Mahathir
after two stints as prime minister ā a lengthy first span that
undermined the constitutional fundamentals of the country and a second
one that afforded an opportunity for what should have been a grand
rectification - still plumping for stances and policies that reek of
tired, old discredited racist positions.
Furthermore, one would
think that now, in his 10th decade in life, the sapience of his
advancing, though not debilitating age, would equip him with its best
conferment - wisdom.
Dismayingly, thatās not the case.
Dr M continues with his charade
The
latest incarnation of his political persona suggests why the fable of
the scorpion and the frog is so telling about unregenerate human nature.
Lest
Mahathir gets away with his falsities, it pays to remind ourselves that
the Malays are politically divided nowadays precisely because of his
pivot, in his first spell of 22 years as prime minister, towards the
concept of Malay dominance of the nationās politics, where it had
previously been Malay primacy.
The pivot was destructive of Malay and national unity - and engendered vast corruption and greed.
The country is living with the consequences of the derangement fomented by his pivot towards Malay dominance from Malay primacy.
Without batting an eyelid at the irony of his prescription, Mahathir sails unabashedly on.
The 19th-century historian of ideas, Georg Hegel, observed that the Owl of Minerva, a symbol of wisdom, flies only at dusk.
By this, he meant that wisdom comes when one is about ready to leave this life.
