Military Cooperation Deal With The US Is A Bad Deal

The tale is told of how in colonial Gold Coast an England trained scholar was invited to guest-preach at the Akropong Presbyterian Church high up on the Akuapem ridge. He had successfully completed his studies in UK and had triumphantly returned home to instant fame and prominence. The iconic church was packed to the rafters. Believers and town folks had come to pay homage to a son of the soil who had gone abroad and done good. Great were expectations that they would hear great stuff from a native son who spoke with the authority of the British queen.

He preached all right and long, perhaps with the authority of the queen and the Catholic Pope. Only that no one understood what he said. He preached in Latin! Imagine sitting in the pew on a hot balmy Sunday and struggling to make sense of "dominus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo".

President Nana Akuffo Addo could be a son of that man. His angry address to Ghanaians regarding the so-called Ghana - US Military Cooperation deal must have sounded Latin to a majority of ordinary folks that heard it.

The language of the address qualifies for an award in literary excellence. Fluid and florid. The delivery itself very arresting, as arresting as the barking of a chihuahua in a den of bulldogs and pit bulls. The attempt by him to equate a military cooperation arrangement with the dictates of the Geneva Convention viz-a-viz UN agencies is simply erroneous and disingenious. For me, the speech in its entirety, betrays the absence of an understanding of the what drives the relationship that whites seek to have with Africa.

I have not used 'whites' to refer to any racial type or skin color. It is used here to represent a mindset that finds expression in a god given right to dominate and rule all. If by now we have not come to discern the motives of the invaders of native lands, we might as well follow the Jonestown model -- mass consumption of arsenic and surrender any rights to life and continuance.

A examination and perception of history must reveal to any scholar of Nana's irk the underlying basis of forceful occupation of other's lands is a "biblical right to discover and dominate non-Christian" lands and everything therein, i.e. natural resources. The white man is driven by the conceptual belief that it is his manifest destiny to discover, conquer and dominate every land on the surface of the Earth as it is the manifest destiny of the native occupiers of those lands to be discovered, conquered and dominated. Colonization, asientos, gospel propagation, chattel slavery, segregation, discrimination, apartheid, are all contraptions designed and employed at different periods to get there. Bilateral cooperation, military/economic alliances, joint exercises etc are all schemes in the never ending pursuit of the same objective. These basic conceptual underpinnings have never been hidden or mystified and remain as they were at the time of Christopher Columbus.

So what business do you have getting yourself into a military cooperation deal with a creature who has never hidden, mystified or abandoned his never-ending desire to dominate any system anywhere? Is it your believe that he seeks cooperation with you for the common good of all mankind? And military cooperation as that? History has little to support that.

You may have scored a point for letting us know about what others before you had done. They, your 'corrupt' predecessors, chose to make deals in the dark, your 'corrupt' predecessor who signed his deal a in the dark, under a dumsor regime when darkness consumed the land and no one could see. But does being transparent in style make you any wiser and insightful than those 'corrupt' predecessors? You must know that the predatory cooperator will lynch both of you natives in a blink, regardless of where, when and how either of you took him in. If a creature who came into contact with our ancestors carrying a book (Bible), a cross and a sword speaking a strange drawl and ended up colonizing and enslaving us does not scare us, we most certainly must be a morons. Now he wants to come in fully armed and loaded under the guise of some dubious cooperation deal.

It is said by the forefathers that the son of the man should never nap under the tree that crushed the man to death. Far from it scaring us into induced paralysis and inaction, it must inform our capacity to develop intelligent adaptations to future encounters with this creature. Nana Kwamena Ansah, the Edina chief who, in the 15th century, first gave refuge to Portuguese adventurer Don Diego d'Azambuja (Italians call their successful gangsters Don!) may have an excuse. He was too uninformed, naive, trusting and simple minded. I would want to believe that we, in our time, are better informed, less naive and therefore more discerning in thought and action.

President Nana Akuffo Addo, ex-presidents Rawlings, Kuffour, late Atta Mills, Mahama, the 24 members of the Paliamentary Select Committee and the Parliament itself have no excuse. Evidently you must be extremely circumspect and more discerning in deciding to cooperate or not to cooperate. Truthfully, that is the question. As at now, you do not need to cooperate militarily with this creature to the extent that you would allow him to situate his super powerful army onto your resource-saturated land. His enemies are not your enemies (unless you wish it so). You do not share any geo-political interests that require the positioning and rapid deployment of killer bees anywhere. He digs holes to mine minerals and pump oil. You dig holes to shit into. Hence your "shithole country". He flies into his towers and golf courses. You crawl on fours to your mosquito infested hut.

I submit, history being my teacher, that you are treading down a dark despairing road and opening yourself up to be re-conquered, re-dominated and possibly re-enslaved by those who would rather have you perpetually confined to the marginal fringes of humanity. A prey never ceases running as long as the predator does not give up the chase.