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."
Does Harapan want to discover what happened to Amri, Koh? - Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Pastor Koh & Amri
Malaysiakini : Enforced disappearance
is frequently used as a strategy to spread terror within society. The
feeling of insecurity and fear it generates is not limited to the close
relatives of the disappeared but also affects communities and society as
a whole. – Amnesty International
COMMENT
| By now everyone should be wondering if the Pakatan Harapan
establishment really wants to discover what happened to Amri Che Mat and
pastor Raymond Koh.
While much has been made of the ethnic composition of this task
force, the real issue here is not the lack of diversity but rather that
all the men who were chosen are part of the Malay establishment who know
“how things work”. If they had chosen independent Malay investigators,
the kind of people who are really interested and have a history of
impartiality, it would not matter if this was a solely a “Malay” affair.
In
the same month of Harapan’s historic win, I wanted the Harapan
government to discover who kidnapped Amri and Koh. Two points from this article need to considered in the light of the appointment of this task force.
1.
“Who had the power (if this allegation is true) to order a tactical
squad to kidnap Malaysians for whatever reason? Who had the authority to
issue such commands and who felt secure enough that their crime would
go unsanctioned by the former Umno state? Who had the political
influence to concoct such a manoeuvre which bypasses the traditional
state security apparatus and mete out whatever fate that befell these
people?”
2. Whoever these people were, they were confident that
the narratives of the state security apparatus would shield them from
whatever repercussions of the former Umno state and - here is the
important part - may very well shield them from the sanctions of the
Pakatan Harapan regime.
The
fact is that these men who were chosen are part of the political,
security, judicial and legal apparatus who for decades serviced Malay
hegemonic agendas and were tasked with maintaining the ecosystem of a
complex web of corporate, security and political interests of the which
apogee is the 1MDB fiasco.
Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s
statement about the formation of the task force should be of concern to
Malaysians. First off, it does seem strange that the task force is there
to investigate the Suhakam report. The task force should be formed to
independently investigate the abductions of Amri and Koh instead of
discovering the credibility of the Suhakam report which is what this sounds like. I may be wrong. The
home minister's concern that the public’s negative reputation of the
police force is bizarre considering the statements made by the current
inspector-general of police (IGP) about the corruption and malfeasance
that goes on in the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM).
Indeed,
all this looks as if it is an investigation into the Suhakam report
instead of an independent investigation into people who are alleged to
have been kidnapped by the state. The Suhakam report should be a
starting point in an investigation of the kidnap instead of being the
focus of the investigation.
I may be wrong. This supposedly
independent task force could investigate these abductions but from the
spin coming out of Putrajaya, it seems as if this task force was created
to provide a fig leaf of credibility to the state security apparatus. When
the Suhakam report first come out, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad
said this -"I think they must produce some evidence, this is merely hearsay”
– which should tell you what the Harapan establishment thinks of the
report. Furthermore, the prime minister also said that all this
“happened during the previous government and a lot of things done under
the previous government are hidden from us, hidden from the public."
That
is the key isn’t it – hidden from the public? When it comes to the 1MDB
fiasco, for instance, the Harapan government has no problem digging
under every rock to demonstrate how rotten the former regime was. Every
scrap of information is released to the public and various ministers
have no problem talking about how 1MDB was the height of corruption of
the Najib Abdul Razak regime.
However, when it comes to the
enforced disappearances of religious figures – and let us not sugarcoat
this incident, this was a kidnapping of people because of their
religious activities – things are different now.
Nobody in the
Harapan government, certainly not the boisterous bunch who before the
election were screaming blue murder, are talking about the alleged
involvement of the state in the kidnapping of citizens of this country.
Why is that? I really believe that the Harapan state is afraid of
what they might discover or they are afraid to expose what they already
know. Think about this for a minute. Supposing the Najib regime had no
idea that a cabal of religious operatives – the deep Islamic state – had
carried out this extrajudicial kidnapping, what would this say about
the political apparatus of this country?
Or,
what if the Najib regime knew what had happened but chose to cover this
up simply because they could not let it be known that they had no
control over certain elements in the bureaucracy. Again, what does this
say about the political apparatus in this country? Or maybe this
was sanctioned by the Najib regime and all this is part of a cover-up
because the Harapan regime has no interest in conducting a long
drawn-out pogrom against state actors who operate beyond the control of
the security and political apparatus of the state?
All this could
merely be conspiracy theories but what we do know is that, so far, the
Harapan state has demonstrated that it has no interest in discovering
who kidnapped Amri Che Mat and Pastor Koh.