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."
Extracted comments from Malaysiakini by Milosevic
: It is a challenge to understand why UMNO’s initial reaction to the
election results is ethno-fascism. If there is anything more to this
hollowed -out organization, one would have thought the obvious response
is moving toward the center, evoking a new multi-racialism, and
promising clear democratic reforms. It is the logical way to salvage the
party.
Instead it embarks on a Milosevian Serbian response, mobilizing
the media, and using heightened racist rhetoric to build up a crisis
frame of group suspicion and paranoia with the aim of undermining an
emerging optimistic quest for multi-racial interaction, transparency,
self-respect, and democratic efficacy.
This does not make
sense. Malaysia is no Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, or Sri Lanka, and it would
require inspired madness to make it so. It does not face the dissolution
of the state with no alternative power bloc in place (there is Pakatan)
as happened in the cases of post-socialist Yugoslavia and
post-apartheid Rhodesia.
These uncertain conditions, authoritarianneo-fascists and oligarchs to
use fear, uncertainty and violence to gain power.
As a relatively
developed economy, any game of further ethnicizing the economy for
political gain (as in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and 1980s and Malaysia in
the 1960s) quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns. Malay
mobility (outside of the UMNO oligarchs) at this point simply cannot be
based on a strong program of ethnically partitioning the economy.
The
key requirements for overall Malay mobility are now good regulations,
the efficient use of resources, strong entrepreneurship,
well-coordinated synergies between institutions, and highly skilled,
thinking individuals. Ethno-fascism only works in very special
conditions, and in fact we can say the troubles in the last so many
years have been caused by the gradual breakdown of Malaysia’s version of
ethno-fascism.
In other words, ethno-fascism will keep bringing fewer benefits to
Malays. All urban Malays already sense this. The pay-offs to them
economically have diminished and they are fed up of being told how to be
Muslim or how to be Malay. This is part of their democratic desires.
All this is apparent, so why is UMNO rehashing an exhausted, defunct
approach which can only go against Malay interests and eventually UMNO’s
interest as an organization?
Only the oligarchs may
benefit for a while, but the hatred of them will only grow. The answer
is, UMNO is indeed a hollow organization with no ability to enact even a
limited program of national, collective purpose. It can throw money
there and here and wantonly risk budgetary problems in the future but
there is no coherent national policy package. Najib does not seem to
have even a minimal sense of what needs to be done, dancing to different
tunes.
Mahathir only knows one script, and
it is Malaysia’s curse that a narcissistic octogenarian, so full of
hang-ups, can cause havoc by trying to freeze Malaysia in his image. He
might even be incentivized to see governmental failure to make his
disastrous rule look good, or see leaders thrown out one after another
until his son can take over.
Unfortunately for him, this
self-indulgent political choice seems doomed to failure in the long-term
for this political vision cannot produce either the hard power
(economic and organization strength) or the soft power (attractive,
optimistic cultural values) to sustain Mahathirism and ethno-fascism in
Malaysia. If Najib thinks he should play by Mahathir’s script to keep
power for a while, he is sadly mistaken. The more he satisfies Mahathir
(he will never know how long this will last), the more he undermines
himself with the general public.
A brave, daring,
thinking leader would seize the moment for a new effort, and take some
risks as a final chance to save his party and
himself. Alas Najib is simply incapable of this, and shows that he is a
inferior leader compared to Tun Abdullah Badawi, who at least sensed the direction Malaysia had to take. We are however at an optimistic time in Malaysia.
Presently the old order is crumbling, but not yet quite dead, and the
new order is struggling to emerge, find unity, and achieve coherence.
This interim period can be chaotic and scary at times, but one can be
confident that the country is beginning a new chapter.
Try
as some reactionaries may to see a Serbian or Sri Lanka outcome in
Malaysia, relying on perverted ideas of ethnic intimidation, this option
is an illusion. Only the UMNO oligarchs are in the crisis mode now, and
are very unlikely to build up a crisis frame for the nation as a whole.
If there is thread of nationalism in UMNO, they should prepare for an
exit. Too many capable people can rule Malaysia for the better, and
Malays sense this. This is the palpable outcome of 2008 and 2013.
