In the midst of death

Hartley Neita, Contributor

IN SEPTEMBER 1939, England joined France and declared war on Germany.

By the following year, Germany had conquered France and chased the English troops from the port of Dunkirk in that country.

For a long time, England was on its own saved only by its air force, which incidentally had a number of Jamaican pilots, navigators and gunmen, such as Dudley Thompson and Arthur Wint, either already serving or on their way to do so.

The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, tried to persuade United States President Franklyn Roosevelt to come to Britain's assistance, and while it seemed as if the President would have liked to, he faced a divided Congress, and a nation which while being kith and kin, was also divided on the issue.

In December 1941, Japan, an ally of Germany, launched an air attack on the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbour in the Pacific.

That attack almost destroyed the US Pacific fleet and killed a few thousand American sailors, marines and soldiers.

President Roosevelt had no problem declaring war on Japan, Germany and Italy.

And as a matter of tactics it was decided that America would join England and her allies to defeat Germany and her allies first, before turning to the Pacific to deal with Japan.

Japan attacked Pearl Harbour on a Sunday. Here in Jamaica people went to church and Sunday School, and spent a quiet day in ignorance of what had happened.

You see, at that time, there was no television to beam the images of destruction live into our living rooms. In fact, it was not until two weeks later that the cinemas in Jamaica received a newsreel showing this attack. In black and white.

Sixty years, less three months later, we have been shocked and stunned while sitting in our living rooms as we watched in full colour scenes of destruction and mass murder in New York and Washington D.C. in America, done by men of the Islamic faith who cared nothing about their lives.

They hi-jacked planes and flew them with their crew and passengers, crashing into buildings and killing themselves along with the plane-loads of people.

In the case of the Japanese pilots of the 1940s, they believed it was the honourable thing to do to drive their planes, crash into their targets and kill themselves if they ran out of bombs. They called their action, Kamikaze.

They also believed that if they failed to carry out orders or their duties it was the honourable thing for them to rip open their stomachs with their swords, an action they called hara-kiri.

So, it ought not to be surprising that there are men who are prepared to strap bombs to their bodies, or fly planes to their certain deaths as long as they kill infidels in doing so.

Their belief is that they will go straight into the bosom of Allah in Paradise. What, of course is fascinating is that they are usually young men, while those who order them to do so are old men who have lived long lives so far.

We in Jamaica must now brace ourselves for what could be an economic and social fall-out from the attacks.

Already the tourist industry has felt the effect of over two days of the closure of the 5,000-odd airports in the U.S. Remittances from relatives could probably drop.

Investors are now going to be waiting to see how the American economy reacts to the incidents on Tuesday and will be cautious about extending their activities overseas for a while. So now that America has been made to sneeze, we should prepare for pneumonia.

This is, therefore, not the time to threaten or carry out acts of mayhem to shore up political fortunes. Jamaica is more important than any of our political parties who wish to choose this path, and we must insist that our leaders behave in a mature and nationalistic manner.

If not we will find that our nation is in the midst of death, and there will be no life.

Amen.

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