An optimist’s plea

Mar 04, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

I again plead with all of our Leaders and Citizens, young and old, not to be distracted by the top International News, that is, the situation and invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Every citizen, particularly those who consider themselves humanist, would have no difficulty with sentiments expressed in our Editorials and other articles dealing with the situation in Europe and we all agree with the Statement in one Editorial published on Tuesday, March 1, 2022, after analysing the situation in Ukraine, it said “Everyone loses nobody wins.”
The trouble is Dear Editor, in Guyana our workers should concentrate on an aggressive stance so that Guyanese workers are fairly treated and obtain optimum benefits for their families from foreign companies operating in Guyana, whether they be by countries in Europe, North America, Asia or the Americas.
This must be an obsession and our duty where Government, Opposition, Civil Society, Trade Unions, Religious bodies, all find common ground so that these God-given non-renewable natural resources benefit us now and in the foreseeable future.
With our bounty of gold, diamonds, timber, marine, arable land, now oil and gas, we should as other countries be able to eradicate poverty within a few years from now, providing Free Education from Nursery to University, a world class health service, sporting and recreational facilities and a restructured National Service to provide the institutional framework and therefore opportunity for us becoming One People eradicating inherited prejudices and the boogey-man of Divide and Rule.
A strange condition that seems to exist is that all of our World Leaders once equipped with military muscle seem compelled to flex those muscles ever so often.
As boys, they were given toy guns but as they grew older and had access to the term made famous during the gulf war, weapons of mass destruction, they all took silly steps to use those weapons.
Maybe there is some flaw in the brain-cells of Leaders everywhere, a condition which makes them addicted to war.
Perhaps this is the unavoidable curse of advanced technology as we move from bows and arrows, spears and swords to ballistic and inter-continental missiles.
How else can we explain this shared stupidity by so-called sane Leaders of State over the past few centuries.
Just over one hundred years ago, a brutal war named World War I, which destroyed property and sometimes priceless artifacts and took millions of lives occurred.
The cause they say was a spark ignited after the ArchDuke of Sarajevo was assassinated by a radical Serb on 28th June, 1914.
The war ended in 1918 with promises by Leaders everywhere, not to engage ever in similar disastrous barbaric adventure. Two decades later, 1939 saw Europe at war with the vanquished Germany being the aggressor.
When I visited the Berlin Wall before it was torn down, my Guide explained to me that the Germans, because they were surrounded by the Netherlands, France, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Poland, Denmark and Czech Republic, always felt helmed in and were therefore by nature defensive and belligerent.
In the height of World War II, why did Germany try to seize and occupy Stalingrad in August 1941? The result was a brutal seven months campaign of fierce fighting which took well over one million lives and saw the Russians repelling the Germans.
Why did the Emperor of Japan in December of 1941 attack American Ships at Pearl Harbour destroying the American Battleships and taking the lives of two thousand three hundred and thirty five Servicemen, and injuring one thousand one hundred and thirty three others?
American President Franklin D. Roosevelt described it as a day of infamy drawing the might of the United States into what some of us previously described as a European Civil War.
At Hiroshima, Japan, 6th of August 1945 and Nakasaki three days later, the newly developed atomic bomb was dropped on these two cities claiming over sixty thousand lives .
My generation remembers Vietnam, the Korean War, Afghanistan etc. The issue seems to be that there is a fatal flaw in the brain-tissue of great Leaders, east, west, north and south, once they have at their command, military might.
The single exception of my generation remembers the two great Ks, Nikita Khrushchev of Russia and J.F. Kennedy of the United States, after setting up a hotline between the Kremlin and the White House avoided the unthinkable of a nuclear holocaust known to as a missile crisis of October 1962.
In each and every one of the above instances, the Leaders did what they believed was in their national interest.
We in Guyana with less than a million souls, must not be distracted by the excitement of these events but concentrate on forging a United Front in dealing with the mighty conglomerates, so that we bequeath our children and our children’s children, a land of prosperity, where Peace, Love and Harmony prevails. Let us every day as we greet the dawn of a new day lift our heads high where the Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhist and Rastafarians thank the Creator for placing us in a country with much natural resources and little or no natural disasters.
I believe too many of us are taking this goodluck, this good fortune for granted. This itself is a curse and condition we must avoid.
I will keep making this plea as an Optimist.

Hamilton Green
Elder

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