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."
Mahathir, on the other hand, started life not as a Malay but a Malayali-the people of Kerala in south India, where his father came from. At university in Singapore, he was listed as an Indian. Perhaps this explains why he became more Malay than many Malays, all the while pursuing a politics which had scant time for Malay instincts for consensus and compromise. The extreme pro-Malay policies with which he was associated in the late 1960s, and which he expressed in his long-banned book, The Malay Dilemma, revealed a deep frustration with traditional Malay ways. His life has been a series of battles to impose his modernising agenda on the nation. At the same time, he has maintained some visceral anti-western feelings, more familiar in the subcontinent than in Malaysia.
Mahathir is full of paradoxes on racial issues. Many of his policies have had the effect of reducing the racial element in government decisions, watering down the agenda to advance Malay interests. As a result he is well regarded by many in the Chinese business community. Yet, despite his trumpeting of Asian identity, he appears ashamed to admit his Indian heritage. In his new book, A New Deal for Asia, he writes about his father in such a way as to imply that he was a Malay dedicated to the improvement of his fellow Malays rather than the hard-working Indian immigrant and government servant that he was. No mention of Mahathir's Indian Muslim background ever appears in the media. The subject is taboo.
Nevertheless, Mahathir has been quick to promote himself as the embodiment of "Asian" identity and values, with diatribes against the west, usually couched in racial terms. Recently, he has taken to describing Anwar as a western stooge; as for the Asian crisis, it was the product of a western conspiracy which has set Asia back a generation. Mahathir, who had courted the foreign investment in export manufacturing which has created so much of Malaysia's wealth, is now the third world's scourge of foreign capital. Anwar, the Islamic teacher, is really a western liberal Trojan horse. Read the complete article here by Philip Bowring.