UN’s strange silence

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.” — Abraham Lincoln address, February, 1860.

GIVEN the record of the United States, particularly with respect to the Philippines, Cuba, Japan and South Korea, the chances are it will not disengage itself from Iraq in under 50 years. It has cocked a snook at the United Nations, dismissing it as Europe dismissed the UN’s predecessor League of Nations.

The buckling under by the United Nations on the critical issue of Iraq is just as shameful as the invasion of Iraq by the United States on the pretext it was searching for weapons of mass destruction. The timing of the US invasion was not by chance. The Bush Administration dared not let the UN weapons inspectors complete their assignment, and report they had found no weapons of mass destruction.

So the United States acted, and having found no such weapons, shifted their propaganda to being in Iraq to free that country, to bring it humanitarian aid and to rebuild it! The relative silence of the United Nations frightens. Had Turkey, for example, invaded Iraq, say late last year, employing the excuse the US used when it attacked Iraq on March 20, this year, the United Nations would have ordered Turkey to cease and desist or face the consequences. But then Turkey is a peewat, militarily and economically. The United States of America is the world’s most recent Empire, and we all know that imperialist nations do not easily tolerate being challenged.

I wish to make the point: I am opposed to Saddam Hussein and his history of dictatorial rule in Iraq, in much the same way I was opposed to the tinhorn dictators of Latin America, Pinochet or otherwise, or indeed of any other part of the world. Although Empire-leaning United States will not readily accede to any demand from Iraqis for an early pullout of their troops, I do not, however, believe that what prompted the American author, Mark Twain, to throw up his hands in horror at the “pacification” of Filipinos, who objected to American rule, will ever happen in Iraq. So angered was Mark Twain that he used the word “barbaric” to describe the “pacification” of the Philippines by the United States, following on the 1898 Spanish-American war.

Twain, horrified by the “pacification”, would say that the white stripe of the US flag — Old Glory — should be repainted black and the stars replaced with the skull and bones. Nonetheless, I write into the record that I believe that the United States of 2003 is a million light years away from the US of the immediate post Spanish-American war, and I am certain is ashamed of that period and would never allow a repeat of that history which had so angered Mark Twain. I shift gears. At Easter, for me, as at Christmas, childhood is a land of return. This Easter I was exchanging notes with close friends about schoolday experiences. I had used two experiences, not altogether without their humour.

When I was about ten and a pupil of St Paul’s Anglican School, better known as Broadway EC, a classmate of mine would give as an excuse for going home late on afternoons after school that he had been attending extra lessons classes given by the school’s headmaster, the late, legendary Victor Noel. One day his guardian and close relative, a Barbadian, went down to the school to thank Mr Noel for having him in his extra lessons class. Several of us were ‘sailing boats’ in the ravine that ran obliquely opposite to where the school was situated, and just before it turned at the side of Promenade Club.

The ‘boat’ of my schoolmate, whose name I shall give as Sonny, was running well ahead of the rest. He shouted to us: “It’s licks like peas in your pweffen!” Suddenly I looked up, tongue tied as I realised that Sonny’s guardian was striding toward him. She grabbed him by the scruff of his neck: “Sonny-ear”, she declared angrily, “I cotch you fay-re.  Come here I gon’ teach you lessons.” Years later, while I was a student of Queen’s Royal College, there was a classmate, who repeatedly turned up without either his schoolbooks or completed homework.

One day, a Master, in the process of explaining a point to the form, noted that the lad was seeking to distract another. The Master asked him to explain the point he had been making.  He could not. Where was his text book? He did not own one. I have used the term Master.  In those days, teachers at Queen’s Royal were referred to as Masters. The Master, stroked his beard. “X”, he said sadly, “I know you have no book and I know  you have no brain, but at least pretend to have some manners.”