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."
Gen Hisham adds four-star glitter to PKR cast by Terence Netto
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
COMMENT Five years ago when PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim cast around for candidates to field in GE12, he had a frustrating time. Several people of calibre he wanted to nominate proved reluctant to
step up, a situation that compelled him to revert to not a few who
turned out to be dubious choices that abandoned the party shortly after
winning parliamentary and state seats. Five years on from the
PKR-led opposition's denial of a two-thirds majority to the ruling BN in
2008, the party faces a wholly different situation.
Though it
is not exactly spoilt for choice in selecting candidates for GE13, the
perception is growing that it has gained a rare find in Md Hashim
Hussein, a former army chief who last night was announced as the PKR
candidate for the parliamentary seat of Johor Baru. The
occasion for the announcement was a PKR ceramah in Kampung Melayu
Majidee in JB - renowned for being an Umno bastion - at which Anwar
hailed Hashim as someone who would add depth, from the angle of national
security, to the Pakatan Rakyat challenge to unseat the ruling BN.
In fact, Hashim has already been named as head of a Pakatan-formed
parallel National Security Council (NSC), a panel the coalition recently
felt impelled to cobble together to advise it on national security
issues that have burgeoned in the wake of the incursion in February of
an armed band from the Philippines on the eastern flank of the Sabah
coast at Lahad Datu. The incident has shed a perverse light on
the democratic ideal of civilian control of the military: whereas the
ideal was meant as a check on militarism, its practice, like several
other matters under Umno-BN misrule, has resulted in the politicisation
of the military.
This Lahad Datu episode, which has already
resulted in 62 deaths to the intruders and of 10 to our security forces,
together with widespread concern over corruption-tainted and seemingly
ill-judged arms procurement exercises made by the Defence Ministry have
prompted Pakatan to form an advisory body, composed of retired senior
army officers and Home Ministry officials, to keep the coalition's
leadership abreast of developments affecting the nation's security. An accomplished officer
Few Malaysians could come better equipped to that role than the PKR candidate for JB. JB-born
Hashim was an accomplished military officer whose career was forged in
the teeth of challenges posed to a fledging nation's armed forces,
ranging from Confrontation with Indonesia in the mid-1960s, to the
threat from militant communism in the peninsula and in Sarawak, and the
need to secure Sabah from the irredentist designs of neighbouring
Philippines. In
the military, which he joined as a 17-year-old straight out of Malay
College where he was a classmate of Anwar's, Hashim was imbued with coup
d'oeil, a French concept of military preparedness that owes its origins
to General Carl Clausewitz, a 19th century military philosopher whose
theories on war are as the renowned Sun Tzu's and Basil Liddell Hart of
Britain.
In Hashim's understanding of coup d'oeil, the concept
entails the ability "to see the invisible in a situation in order to
attain the impossible."
Perhaps another way to render this
formulation is to advert to what good chess players must have: a quick
sight of the board - the ability to visualise the out-rolling of a
pattern leading to an ideal checkmate.
Nowhere perhaps was his
acquisition of this quality tested more than when he headed the
Malaysian battalion (Malbat) that was part of the United Nations
Protection Force (Unprofor) in Bosnia in 1993. At a place called
Konjic in Bosnia, Gen Hashim had to lead the Malbat force of 1,568
soldiers safely out of a zone that came under fire from Croatian snipers
to the relative safety of Sarajevo. His leadership of the
contingent earned him a promotion from colonel to one-star general (Brig
Gen), a promotion that was unprecedented for a Malaysian military
officer serving in a peacekeeping mission abroad. Thereafter,
Hashim's rise through to the top position in the army was swiftly
graduated, reaching the top post in the army by 1999 when he was its
chief. Speaking circuits
It was his experience as commander of the truce-keeping Malaysian force
in Unprofor that was much sought after overseas as offers arrived for
him to lecture on the challenges of peacekeeping at military colleges in
Singapore, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland and Australia. "I must admit the honorariums given to me for those lectures were
gratifying," quipped Hashim, in the course of an interview with Malaysiakini before being named as the PKR candidate for JB. After his retirement from the army in 2002, Hashim served a stint as
Malaysian High Commissioner to Pakistan in 2003-2006 and was chairperson
of the National Authority for Chemical Weapons Convention at Wisma
Putra in 2007-2010. A long discussion with Anwar in 2006 on
national affairs got things stirring in him, and this was stoked by
promptings of his late wife Rabiah Abu Bakar, a teacher whom he married
in 1969, that he should help his former classmate in the latter's
struggle for reforms to the country's politics. On
March 6, weeks after the Lahad Datu incursion which for him reflected
what he saw as the folly of allowing politics to influence national
security considerations, he made the decision to plunge into politics.
To a huge crowd at a PKR-organised ceramah in Bagan Serai, Perak, a
week later, Hashim, 66, a competent public speaker, lauded Anwar's
leadership caliber and said that national security concerns should never
be compromised by politics and defence procurement projects should not
be tainted by mercenary motives.
Hashim's selection to contest
the formidable Umno incumbent Shahrir Samad for the JB seat reflects the
priority PKR places on prising the ward from BN's grip.
No
doubt, he will plunge into the endeavour with the fervour and panache
that he brought to varied challenges he faced at critical junctures in
his military career.
In the process, he is certain to scant the
advice his beloved Rabiah ("I not only loved her, I admired her," he
said about the quiet presence who had been behind his success as a
military man) that he should not undertake anything new in his life
because of his penchant for delving deep into it to insure success.
Win or lose, this trait is likely to give Hashim's public profile a
prominence that would shed contrary light on American General Douglas
MacArthur's whimsical musing that "Old soldiers never die, they just
fade away". Malaysiakini 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.
The
occasion for the announcement was a PKR ceramah in Kampung Melayu
Majidee in JB - renowned for being an Umno bastion - at which Anwar
hailed Hashim as someone who would add depth, from the angle of national
security, to the Pakatan Rakyat challenge to unseat the ruling BN.
In
the military, which he joined as a 17-year-old straight out of Malay
College where he was a classmate of Anwar's, Hashim was imbued with coup
d'oeil, a French concept of military preparedness that owes its origins
to General Carl Clausewitz, a 19th century military philosopher whose
theories on war are as the renowned Sun Tzu's and Basil Liddell Hart of
Britain.
On
March 6, weeks after the Lahad Datu incursion which for him reflected
what he saw as the folly of allowing politics to influence national
security considerations, he made the decision to plunge into politics.
