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."
COMMENT
After mulling - all of the last four weeks - what their response ought
to be to the 'Black 505' rally at Padang Merbok today, the police appear
to be wavering between acquiescence in the organisers' demand that the
gathering not be impeded and aversion to the whole spectacle.Benign
acceptance by the police of the whole affair was indicated yesterday by
Zainuddin Ahmad, the OCPD of Dang Wangi, who appeared to have given
PKR's director of strategy Rafizi Ramli a signalof his contingent's intent to allow the gathering to take place unhindered, but in the end he hedged the signal with ambiguity. However, there was no equivocation late yesterday by his boss. Kuala Lumpur Chief Police Officer Mohmad Salleh (left)
not just confined himself to proscribing the whole gathering, he went a
good deal further by imputing malevolent intent to its organisers in a statement he issued to the press. Without
tendering a shred of evidence to the effect, Salleh claimed the
organisers harbour intent to stir participants to provoke the police
into violent action against them. He said the organisers wanted
the whole world to witness what could then be passed off as police
brutality, directed at seemingly harmless but gullible demonstrators.In
other words, a conspiratorial and evil-intending few would use gulls at
the 'Black 505' gathering to stir the police into high dudgeon that
would eventuate in harsh treatment meted out to all and sundry. Unbridled statement by CPO Never
mind that in the last six years the three big gatherings organised by
polls reform pressure group Bersih (on Nov 10, 2007, July 9, 2011 and
April 28, 2012)), the one huge gathering put on by the Hindu Rights
Action Force (Hindraf, Nov 25, 2007), plus the mammoth 'People's Rising'
gathering of last January - all had taken place in the city of Kuala
Lumpur without any serious incident save the instances where the police
themselves decided to react harshly, but KL CPO Salleh decided he would
dabble in the imaginary rather than the real. This
he did by attributing evil intent to the organisers and gullibility to
some participants in today's 'Black 505' gathering who, if the CPO is to
be believed, would play by the script of a conspiratorial coterie by
provoking police to attack ordinary citizens, engaged in what has come
to be known, in the lexicon of human rights agitation, as 'symbolic
speech'. CPO Salleh, perhaps, did not intend it, but he has
inadvertently given the forces pressing for the creation of the
Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) an
assist, simply by attributing malign intent to the ‘Black 505'
organisers, where there is no prior or current proof of its presence
while suggesting that the police are enforcers who are hard put to sift
the malevolent from the mundane. This is the nub of the argument put
forward by proponents of the IPCMC. However, the unbridled
statement by the CPO may turn out to be a pathetic and last-minute
attempt to put fear into people intending to participate in today's
gathering that they are in danger of being caught up in pitched battles
between a forbearing force and evil-intentioned schemers out to blacken
the good name of the force. All is calm in the morning On
journey early this morning through the venue of the gathering, Padang
Merbok, and areas fringing, it was notable for the conspicuous absence
of the men in blue although the roads leading to Dataran Merdeka were
cordoned off by Dewan Bandaraya (KL City Hall)-erected barricades rather
than by police-marked ones. It
is a little too early to suggest that this no-show by the police would
obtain for the rest of the day. But seven hours before the 'Black 505'
gathering time at 2pm at Padang Merbok, the police are not in the mood
to give teeth to the bluster that emanated from their head honcho in the
city. Or is it that the police have borrowed from the book of
their seeming political masters who, because of a five-year absence of a
parliamentary two-thirds majority now coupled with an unprecedented
loss of the popular vote, only know how to deal with adversity through
the use of force and, when that is no longer feasible, resort to the
threat of its use. This recession from demonstrably forceful - as
distinct to rhetorically forceful - response to adversity only serves
to underscore the fact of what today's 'Black 505' gathering is intended
to convey: The Umno-BN government has lost the moral legitimacy to
govern. TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four
decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the
eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.
However, there was no equivocation late yesterday by his boss. Kuala Lumpur Chief Police Officer Mohmad Salleh (left)
not just confined himself to proscribing the whole gathering, he went a
good deal further by imputing malevolent intent to its organisers in 
This
he did by attributing evil intent to the organisers and gullibility to
some participants in today's 'Black 505' gathering who, if the CPO is to
be believed, would play by the script of a conspiratorial coterie by
provoking police to attack ordinary citizens, engaged in what has come
to be known, in the lexicon of human rights agitation, as 'symbolic
speech'.
It
is a little too early to suggest that this no-show by the police would
obtain for the rest of the day. But seven hours before the 'Black 505'
gathering time at 2pm at Padang Merbok, the police are not in the mood
to give teeth to the bluster that emanated from their head honcho in the
city.
