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Undoing the mess

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A little while back I watched this hilarious show called Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay and placed it on my personal awesomest list of favourite shows in the world to watch. In the show, President George Bush, Jr is presented as a weed-smoking clueless junkie who didn't give a thought about the things he did and who didn't have a clue about what exactly was happening in the infamous prison for terrorist suspects.

Of course, in the light of 9/11, I'm sure many people would have catched Michael Moore's Faherenheit 911, and some of you might have catched this freaky documentary on the US Fundamentalist movement called Jesus Camp. Either way, the documentaries and movies of today go beyond entertainment (even slapstick comedies like Harold and Kumar propose to be smart in its undertones and waste no time in taking sharp jabs at the country's premier).

I don't know how many of you were able to catch Obama present his case on why he has to make 'drastic' measures to undo the National Security mess that the previous US presidential administration has left behind. If you haven't here's a site that also has a video of the speech delivery. I've read many of the President's speech since the presidential elections, but this is the first time I've experience watching Obama articulate his plans and making a plea to a nation already terrified by many incidents that has changed their nation forever.

I don't claim to understand how people who've lost their family and friends to terrorist attack feel. I can imagine that 'justice' is a word that is required by many people. To most people who have been attacked (whether physically, or, in my latest American Idol online fiasco where my loud mouth attacked the psyche of a die-hard Lambert fan), the need to overcome very often comes with the message that goes, "I am right, I have been victimized…' and followed by the definitive 'you are to be blamed, you're wrong, you hurt me. Say sorry.'

So I've always wondered what somebody who is suffering loss of a dear one to terrorist attacks want as a satisfied version of their 'justice'. Would a 'I'm sorry' suffice? Would that person's death by hanging suffice? Would that terrorist's life long sentence in a maximum security prison suffice? Would sending that terrorist to Guantanamo Bay (where, according to Harold and Kumar, they make you eat Cock Sandwich) suffice? Would enough torture programs suffice?

When would it end?

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The other side of the coin was what brought about this whole dramatic period of time where we have gone beyond Cold Wars and Communist threats to live in a fear-based climate of terrorist attacks. The Al Qaeda threats all came with the message of 'we want justice'. Holy War happens on the basis of seeking justice.

But an eye for an eye merely causes both parties to lose sight of the real situation. Peace can only happen when one side is willing to put down their anger to do the possibly impossible: forgive, and let go. Move on. Start over. As Obama said so rightly, as long as we keep Guantanam Bay open, the page will never turn, and we will never move on.

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I wonder if the people in our awesome Government who swear by the need for the Internal Security Act to 'serve' and 'protect' this nation are aware of the important debates on the US National Security that are ongoing now. Fundamentally, we have been brought up in a human civilization that swears by a survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest has always been defined by win-lose scenarios, where the loser will give up and die. Go to jail. Never be seen again.

Anger causes us to keep our minds in something that has happened in the past, and anger has kept us living in the same way, in a cyclic version of life for several millenia. That's why war occurs over and over again. Because people are unwilling to move on and start over. They take their scars from generations past and decide on actions to retaliate in order to 'seek justice' and the result is the current season of depravation, fear-based, to-each-his-own, I-shall-be-the-final-victor mentality that drives and motivate every life on earth. Every government on earth.

So its easy to understand why the Barisan government can't stop singing the same tune of 'you should be grateful for what we have done and stop blaming us'. Change is a scary thing because it threatens to reveal mistakes for what they are, mistakes. But if change is definite and we refuse to accept, than stupid, illogical things will keep on happening. The Perak Fiasco will never end because Barisan simply refuses to accept defeat. So the courts lose their credibility. The police lose their credibility. Previously respectable people lose their credibility. If Zambry persists and insists that his team is the rightful government of Perak, they will continue to alienate voters, even sympathizers.

The fact is, Nizar didn't even have enough time to prove the effectiveness of the Pakatan Rakyat government when his administration was hijacked by several dramatic turns of events. In desperate attempts to keep the throne, the Barisan Nasional Government has become hideously creative in their methodologies, and you can sense the anger seething across the nation (even among people who were previously strong supporters of BN). Had they dissolved the assembly in the first place, even had they lost the entire state once again to PR, they would have given themselves an opportunity to redeem themselves as a transparent and credible party.

Either way, any good king would know that if he were the rightful owner of the throne, eventually he will regain a lost throne.

Malaysia has lost its direction. 1Malaysia. Hah. I think Obama would have a hard time undoing the mess we have in this country. But I hope he resolves the mess the Bush administration left behind in the states. At least the US has a chance to undo their mistakes by making positive changes. Alas our government insists on defending their mistakes by commiting even more disastrous ones.