complicated simplicity

Last night’s talk by Mahathir on ‘The Case for Criminalising War’ was indeed a well thought out affair. Even though there were a few unfortunate incidents (read my previous post), everything seemed as normal. I had my college ID checked 4 times on the way up to the LT where Tun Mahathir was speaking, all in the short span of 20 metres. The entrance to the SAF building was manned by 4 college security personnel, 2 more at the foot of the main stairs, 2 at the top, and 2 more at the entrance of the LT, all demanding our college IDs. Why the security? Read here [link: College restricts PPS event].

Mahathir spoke on his case of criminalising war, making Bush, Howard and Blair responsible, as proponents of war. I half had this image of a half deranged Mahathir speaking, but the Mahathir I met was very much unlike what I perceived. He was a very eloquent man, sharp and persuasive. He spoke for over 40 minutes without look at his notes even once, maintaining eye contact with his audience. He brought his message not only with words, but with body language, without being pushy. He never once mentioned Islam, until prodded by our friends from the Jewish Society, and brought forth a case that was convincing and justified. A case to criminalise war, of all kinds. His parting message was simple - War brings about harm to the people who least want it, the people of the nations. War is ineffective in conflict resolution, and only causes more harm.

This was very unlike the other speaker (from the The Ramadhan Foundation) who made Islam seem very much a victim of the current situation all over the world. You could see the pain in audience in his pushiness and arrogance with some pretty strong anti-West rhetoric, while quoting from great American presidents.

Of course, the fun time came during the Q&A, where the chair was smart enough to limit the discussion to the topic of criminalising war, despite the effort by some elements to hijack the topic.

On asked, about his tenure as the PM of Malaysia, and how he saw defense expenditure if he was indeed against war, he has this to say, (not exact words, until I get a transcript)

We had to spend unnecessary money on equipment for war, because our neighbour decided to buy fancy toys like new F-16s. We had to keep our morale up, the morale of the soldiers, so we wasted about 160million ringgit on each F-16 so we had fancy toys to play with as well. (something to this effect). We could have spent the money much better in eradicating poverty, but no.

On being asked about what he thought about 3rd parties stepping in to stop conflicts in places like Zimbabwe and Darfur where people were dying regardless of an external agent for war, he had this pot shot at Badawi.

I’m not sure if the forced change of leaders would help the situation in the countries. In my personal experience, the change in leadership is not always a good thing.

The Q&A showed how sharp Tun Mahathir was when answering questions. He deftly deflected a hijacked question on the terror financing by a reporter who managed to sneak in, as well as turning a question on it head by the Jew Society (I assumed) when he was asked to condemn Islam for violence against Jews. He earned applause for that answer where he firmly stated his objection towards violence in conflict resolution. The rep from JewSoc was quite stunned by his response I think.

Here we have an article by a new agency on his talk last night. [link: Howard a war criminal: Mahathir]

I await the transcript from the PPS.

These events are make an overseas education worth it.