Features
Questions for America
• World’s policeman
If there is one single country that fascinates me, it is the almighty United States of America. A very boastful nation, the US catches my attention every time there is news about that country.
I was taught by Americans during a period I consider critical in my development as a human. Ms. Elizabeth Suhre taught me English language for three years. Carol Wool and one Ms. Fenning taught me Physics and Mr. Brunner taught me Chemistry. They were Peace Corps Volunteers in the sixties and seventies.
I know the economic geography of the US at my fingertips, and I respect Americans for their work ethics, especially their farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers. Americans generally don’t care who occupies the White House so long as life is bearable for a comfortable existence. A democracy that suits America is made to work like clockwork.
The system set out in the articles of statehood is made to work, irrespective of who their president is. Now, my question is: Why doesn’t America allow other countries to run their affairs the way they are best suited to their own circumstances? Does America really believe Western democracy is the ideal and workable system for the rest of the world?
Conferring on itself the role of policeman of the world, America tries to impose its values on the rest of the world and whip ‘recalcitrant’ countries into line. Without recourse to the cultures of other nations, the US uses brute force, overthrowing some in the process.
Cases abound to prove this. Between the time the US invaded Iraq and the time they left that country, how many Iraqi and American souls were lost? If Saddam Hussein were still in charge, would that number of his countrymen have died? Would thousands of American soldiers have died needlessly? Has Iraq fared better after the Yankee invasion?
Let us ask the same of Libya. Libya has known no peace since America, aided and bamboozled by France, murdered Muammar Gaddafi. The late Libyan leader’s crime was to make Africa independent of foreign direction. Also, the West could not come to terms with the fact that Libya did not tie its economy to the apron strings of the Bretton Woods institutions.
America has not learnt any lessons from the humiliation it suffered in Vietnam, yet it has ventured out to Somalia, Iran, and Afghanistan. Not only that. With all the gloating over being the most powerful nation on earth, America cries out to the world about cyberattacks from outside its shores anytime there are elections. They blame this on China, Russia, Iran, and others they see as rogue states. How come?
I think America has the largest technology hub in the world, located in Silicon Valley. Yet they cannot build firewalls to fend off cyberattacks? So, wherein lies the might of the US? Aren’t there more questions for America than there are answers?
Why should any country be interested in who Americans elect? It is because the US is too loud-mouthed. They brag about almost anything under the sun while others sit quietly strategising about technological advancement. Every noisome pestilence has a soft underbelly that is exposed to attacks from the irritated enemy. And this fact is lost on the US.
Is the US aware it irritates the rest of the world by imposing its will on the rest of us? In the end, they end up paying the price for their misdeeds. Osama bin Laden was a progeny of American foolhardiness, yet he bloodied America’s nose on 9/11, not so? To the extent that the US has become so skittish, it has deployed $400,000 missiles to shoot down $25 balloons after the scare of a Chinese spy balloon. I can’t laugh well enough.
Can America point to just one country they went into and left a success story behind? I am not happy with Czar Putin’s war on Ukraine. It is my prayer that Ukraine drives the Russians out of its soil because no country has the right to want to annex another. This argument about Russia being wary of NATO expansion seems balderdash to me.
I believe that because many of these countries, including Russia, have too many stockpiles of weapons they need to dispose of and build new ones, Ukraine comes in handy. In the final analysis, Russia and NATO will be richer because Ukraine will end up paying billions of dollars for all the armament supplied to it.
I still have questions, though. Will America tolerate Russian military bases in the western hemisphere in, say, Cuba or Haiti? How about Mexico asking Czar Putin to build a nuclear plant on its soil? I will not claim to understand geopolitics, but this idea of “you are either with us or against us” must give way to the acceptance of every sovereign nation to choose their own path to suit their needs and circumstances.
By its posturing, America does not want any country to have a mind of its own. Meanwhile, Americans speak and write English language the way it suits them, and not even the English complain. Americans play football, not with their feet. America speaks descriptive English, not classical.
Americans do not ride horses; they ride ‘horse back.’ Simply put, they just want to be Americans. How come they don’t want others to be what or who they want them to be?
Haiti has descended into anarchy, insolvency, and failure just next door, but America will not help sanitise that hemisphere. What sense does it make to want to help Ukraine while there is bloodshed on a daily basis close by? I am not suggesting that Ukraine not be helped, but is it because Haiti is of little or no economic significance to America’s interests? Or because that country was a French territory?
I believe the rest of the world will applaud the US if it sends troops to take down the criminal gangs that seem to be taking the whole nation of Haiti hostage. That is what a big brother does. But America will talk so much about China without talking to the Chinese themselves.
They talk plenty about Russia yet stay away from talking to the Russians. It is the same with Iran.
About a week ago, Iran claimed it had almost reached an agreement on a prisoner swap with the US, but Washington quickly denied ever talking with the Iranians.
What hurts is the fact that there are many Americans who have become early veterans before age 25. I have children of friends and relatives who have seen action in Iraq and Afghanistan before they could mature as young adults. Many of their war veterans suffer lifelong post-war trauma. Some have become drug addicts, homeless, and destitute. Theirs is a wasted generation.
Now, francophone Africa seems to be awakening to France’s economic strangulation that has been their lot since that country colonised them and is breaking ranks. Mali and Burkina Faso are very recent examples, and the West has every reason to be worried. Worried, not because the people want to chart their own path but because of their romance with the criminal gang called the Wagner Group.
These are mercenaries who will plunder these countries’ mineral resources in return for their ‘services.’ America is not blind to the fact that France gets these poor countries to deposit their foreign reserves in France. When these countries need loans, France lends them its own money and charges interest on the same money. Has America ever called France’s attention to this immorality?
What kind of policeman is the US? Personally, I feel nervous about this Wagner Group on African soil. Those of our leaders who have opened their borders to this group are playing with a venomous reptile. But America and the West must admit that their actions are driving others into the arms of groups like Wagner.
This writer may be simplistic in looking at these things, but when common sense is ignored, it becomes rather expensive to mend destroyed fences.
Writer’s email address:
akofa45@yahoo.com
By Dr. Akofa K. Segbefia
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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