The Tragic Irony of...."The White Man's Burden"

Hantu Laut

Remember "The White Man's Burden" a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. The poem consists of seven stanzas, but I am only going to give the first stanza, the rest you can google if it is of interest to you.

The 1st stanza:

Take up the White Man's Burden, Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild..
Your new-caught, sullen people, Half-devil and half-child.

Kipling wrote the poem soon after the Spanish-American War and the colonisation of the Philippines by the American. 

Kipling, at that time considered the natives of the colonies of the white men as uncouth, uncivilised and that "The White Man" had a duty to refine the barbaric and brutish parts of the world. He began by describing the colonised Filipinos as "new-caught sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child. Surprisingly, up till today many Filipinos still revered the white men 

Some imperialists interpret the poem as aspirations to dominate the world and the European powers had embarked and colonised many parts of the world through whatever method suitable to them and the world at their mercy.

The Western world imperialism existed till today to dominate the rest of the world and impose its will on those considered half-devil and half-child....... illumining these lesser beings had never been exhausting for them.

In the old days they used a multitude of tactics from intimidation to gunboat diplomacy and to all out war. The audacity  much rest on whether the natives are timid or hostile.

Today, things haven't changed much, they still want to rule the world, only the tactics has changed. 

"You are with us, or against us", George Bush's belligerent call to his Western allies to join him when the U.S decided to invade Iraq that led to the toppling of Saddam Hussein and invasion of the country  for almost a decade. 

The Iraq War, spurred by Saddam supposedly possession of WMD (weapons of mass destruction), which later was found to be a big lie fabricated by the U.S. A blatant lie to cover its real attention, retribution for 9/11 to avenge the Muslim terrorists attack on the Twin Tower in New York on 11 Sept 2001 that killed over 3000 people, mostly Americans. 

Hundred of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children were killed in this revenge killings and the country razed to the ground by incessant and indiscriminate bombings by the U.S and her allies. Britain, among the coalition partners was the biggest running dog for theU.S lied to the world about Saddam's WMD. 

The irony, almost two-thirds of the terrorists were Saudis, but the U.S think it was Saddam that should be punished when they knew very well most of the fundings of Islamic terrorism came from Saudi Arabia, their closest ally in the Middle East.

Is Iraq peaceful and safer now? I am sure many of you would know the answer to that. 

The country is completely devastated and torn apart in sectarian violence. A puppet government installed by the U.S is completely corrupt, incompetent and ineffective. ISIS, the Islamist militants has seized large swathe of territory in Iraq and neighbouring Syria filling the power vacuum.

Afghanistan, invaded much earlier than Iraq following the 9/11 attack was to dismantle the Al Qaeda and seek the extradition of Osama bin Laden.When the Taliban government refused to entertain their request, the U.S and Britain invaded the country and bombed it to smithereens, killing thousands of innocent Afghan civilians. They finally managed to track down Osama and killed him in May 2011, not in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan the so called American ally harbouring its biggest enemy. So much for the best intelligence unit in the world, took over a decade to track him down!

They buried Osama at sea on the ground that burying him on land may turn his grave into a shrine and a martyr to the Muslims>

Did killing Osama stopped Islamic terrorism?

See, the American not all that smart, they killed one devil and thousands more sprung up with bigger thirst to inflict bigger atrocity and violence against the West.

Think of what Boko Haram did two days ago in a Nigerian village, razed to the ground and wiped out the entire village of 2000 or more inhabitants.

ALAS! THE WEST DIDN'T CRY! Not a squeak of empathy and sympathy.

Seventeen killed in Paris and the whole ground shook with cry of sympathy calling for unity and solidarity over the killing of freedom of expression.......and there was huge global response almost 2 million thronged the streets of Paris including the biggest mass murderer of our time coming out of the state of Israel.

What irony!

In May 2014 the U.S announced that its combat operations would end in 2014, leaving only residual force until the end of 2016.

I can safely assume that Afghanistan will return to the Talibans, or the like of it as soon as all foreign forces left the country.

The Western powers have not only destroyed these two countries, they have also destroyed almost all the Arab countries in the Middle East through proxy wars, except Saudi Arabia, the worst offender of personal liberty and human rights subjecting its citizens to extremely harsh Islamic laws, but the American and her Western allies love these medieval Wahhabis for their oil money and not give two hoots of her draconian laws and human right abuses of her own citizens.

This double-standard and hypocrisy are being played out wherever and whenever their interests at stake without due care and attention for human lives other than theirs.

As in Matthew 12.30 of the Gospel "Whoever is not with me is against me and whoever does not gather with me scatters" said Jesus. 

Does it not ring true of the Western powers' convention?

The recent deadly attacks in Paris that killed 17 people by wayward Muslims shows that all is not well between Islam and the West. Many Muslims viewed the West as arrogant, bigoted, domineering, unjust and want to subjugate and dominate the rest of the world.Out of those killed 12 worked for the bigoted magazine called Charlie Hebdo.

The root of the problem between Muslims and the West started over 60 years ago with the creation of the state of Israel as laid out in the Balfour Declaration for the creation of a Jewish state out of Palestinian land.

In 1945 when US President Roosevelt went to see King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia with the proposal for the creation of a new country for the Jews, King Abdul Aziz told Roosevelt since it was the Germans who committed atrocities against the Jews why not carve a bit of Germany and give it to the Jews. Roosevelt, however, told the King that the US would not intervene without consulting both Arabs and Jews in the region. Soon after, Roosevelt died and the presidency was taken over by Harry Truman.

In the final stage of the Second World War, the US under Truman dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought the war to an end and the surrender of Japan. Truman, with the new found victory, arrogantly ignored to consul the Arabs and together with the other Western allies went ahead with the creation of Israel in 1948, which spurred the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Many Muslims, particularly, from the Middle East viewed the West as the biggest "munafik" and their own governments as corrupt, incompetent and easily cowed by the West. To correct the injustices, it has become expedient and rest on their shoulders to fight a private war against the West. 

Past wars between Arab states and Israel had been catastrophic for the Arab countries with the Arabs losing more territories to Israel. If right is might instead of might is right, there was no pressure from the Western powers for Israel to return the occupied territories. The West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights were Arab lands occupied by the Jews till today.

It's OK for them to mock your culture and religion and make fun of your prophet, which they called freedom of expression, but you can't call them White, that's racist!

It's OK if thousands of you Muslims killed by Jews, but you must not be anti-semitic, or say the Holocaust never happened, it's a punishable offence.

The White Man's Burden will continue to crack its whip for world's domination to terrify and purify the half-devil and half-child.