The Madness of War, American-Style
Originally posted at TomDispatch.
The American invasion of Iraq began almost 18 years ago in mid-March 2003. By early April, that country’s capital, Baghdad, had fallen and before the month ended the war was considered over and won. On May 1st, President George W. Bush, in the co-pilot’s seat of a Navy fighter jet, landed on the aircraft carrier the USS
Abraham Lincoln and gave his “mission accomplished” speech. (“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.”) By then,
Nigerian Leaders Need To Be Public Spirited, Equanimous And Apolitical To Tackle COVID-19
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As rightly opined by Oliver Goldsmith, “He who fights and runs away may live to fight another day; but he who is battle slain can never rise to fight again.” However, the legendary Bob Marley lyrically put it more explanatorily thus: “Rise up fallen fighters, Rise and take your stance again, it is he who fight and run away, Live to fight another day”.
Analyzed from the foregoing perspective, one can assert with equanimity that Nigeria never ran away from the fight against COVID-19 except that it made plethora of mistakes throughout the period the fight lasted. Simply put, it fought the war wrongly.
NationofChange
The lessons of two failed wars.
In choosing a title for his final, posthumously published book, the prominent public intellectual Tony Judt turned to a poem by Oliver Goldsmith,
The Deserted Village, published in 1770. Judt found his book’s title in the first words of this couplet:
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay
A poignant sentiment but let me acknowledge that I’m not a big Goldsmith fan. My own preferences in verse run more toward Merle Haggard, whose country music hits include the following lyric from his 1982 song “Are the Good Times Really Over?”:
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The Covid 19 pandemic has changed our lives. There is now the ‘new normal.’ Just two examples are -working from home and online teaching and learning. Will we ever get back to the pre- Covid days specially where schooling is concerned? I fear not and I hope I am wrong. Because teaching can never be done through the remoteness of technology. There has to be that personal touch. That eye to eye contact. That combination of both heart and mind. And so it is with a deep feeling of nostalgia that I write this article.
It’s a tribute to two great teachers – Vijitha (Viji ) Weerasinghe and B. St. E. de Bruin ( Bruno ). Despite the numerous tributes paid during the past years to these two Great Teachers, why it may it be asked is it necessary to write about them again? Here is my answer as I quote Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony: ‘Here was Caesar! Whence cometh another?’