Can you protect the ones you love?

From Internet

 

Dear Reader,

Thank you for coming here!

Watched a good movie and had some thoughts.

It is a Chinese movie and apparently there are different English names for it — Sheep Without a Shepherd II or Fireflies in the Sun. I prefer the second one.

The main character of the movie was a father who had a beautiful, loving and happy family, even though he had no money or power.

Of course, something bad had to happen.

His cute son which he loved dearly needed a heart transplant to live. Apparently, the help they could get from government or charity was limited.

They faced two problems:

1. Wait for a matching heart, which is rare — the heart needs to come before it is too late.
2. Money

They did everything to accumulate enough money, including selling blood and borrowing from loan-sharks, while waiting for the heart.

Finally, the heart came, but was stolen because the mayor’s son needed it too! 

Out of options, the father carried out a bold plan with all he had — his intellectual power and his life.

He knew he would not walk out of it alive and he knew that was the last chance for his son.

From internet

My thoughts are:

• As a commoner which is the vast majority of us, do we possess the capability (intellectual power, courage, execution capability etc etc)to protect the ones we love, as the last resort, when the World turns its back on us and decides to dump us into the trash?
• As the privileged minority, try not to cross the line. Even one in a million rises up, and that is enough to change a lot of things and the privileged has everything to lose.

My favorite lines from the movie:

我们可以为了生活忍气吞声，可以接受卑微的活着，但是他们不能像虫子一样把我们随意踩死!

犯了错就要受惩罚，不管是谁，不管在哪里，我们都要学会接受！

 

Till next time!

Leaders continue on, knowing that they will be wronged

Photo by Duncan Kidd on Unsplash

Dear Readers,

Thank you for coming here!

My journey to finishing “The Pacific War Trilogy” continues. I am at 10% of the third book, on track to completing it in H1 this year.

Today I would like to share with you another take-away.

Let’s begin.

Douglas MacArthur gained favor of almost all American people due to his strategy towards the media during the war.

He had been leveraging his popularity to request for more power and more support to his strategy.

He requested to command all forces, air, land and sea, in the Pacific War Theater.

He requested to recover Philippines before attacking Japan in its inner defense circle, even though this might delay the war by up to 6 months.

Some top generals believed that he valued his own commitment to “Return to Philippines” more than winning the war, which was the end goal.

Of course, he was not getting what he wanted, because luckily people with higher ranks were rationale and had the right attitude.

Photo by Kevin Schmid on Unsplash

Then, people believed he would participate in the presidential election against Roosevelt.

Even though he would have had no chance anyway, this incident gave his supporters an opportunity to accuse Roosevelt and other people at the top for letting political opinions interfere with the War strategy.

Putting it bluntly, MacArthur’s requests were not granted because he was a potential opponent in the election. 

And just then, big strategic decisions needed to be made.

With a series of victories in the Pacific against the Japanese, Allies needed to fix their strategy to keep the momentum.

And it was clear that they needed to attack the Japs in its inner circle of defense, and not Philippines, Japs’ well-fortified outer defense.

And the decision was not to be delayed.

But the shadow of accuse would not disappear. The only way to avoid it would be to give MacArthur what he wanted and risk tens of thousands more of American lives.

The fact was that the US leadership made the right decision, knowing that they would be wronged by some people.

That is real courage and sacrifice! That is real leadership!

Photo by Rodrigo Rodriguez on Unsplash

Also, people will eventually learn the truth.

MacArthur was so favored during the war and even after the war by the public.

Then Korea war happened. MacArthur finally tasted the bitterness of his arrogance.

And present day, people increasingly learned his mistakes during the war, especially his inability to avoid “Another Pearl Harbor”, where majority of US air forces in Philippines were also destroyed on the ground by Japanese air raid, after “Pearl Harbor” with ample time for him to react. It was reported that his air-force generals requested repeatedly for his orders and he just ignored all of them.

Also the fact that he accepted 500K USD from the Philippines president, which is equivalent to 8 Million USD today, was compared to Eisenhower who rejected the offer from the same president.

It is almost impossible to hide the truth forever, especially so in the current age.

People will get their “justice”.

 

Till next time!