Red Lines Through Dr. H. B. Fahnbulleh, Jr.’s Chatter: Debunking Sophism II
By Samuel D. Tweah, Jr.
So the model used in “No Patience for H. B. Fahnbulleh’s Tired Writings: Debunking Sophism” really works: catalyze Fahnbulleh’s deconstruction by pitting his rickety arguments against one another and prove that he is a mere coliseum of contradictions. Nothing more, nothing less! This is the model we continue to use to demolish this chatterer. His demolition will happen in phases. First, we exorcise his demon of demented arguments and malodorous braggadocio.
During this exorcism, which we now see in his recent rebuttal, Fahnbulleh degenerates to bawdry outpourings of venom, bovine unreason and a childish propensity to parry insults. This is the phase in which we are feted to a circus where all and sundry amuse themselves to this wretched spectacle babbling absurdities. The next phase is the actual disintegration of the man, during which he crumbles under the weight of the burden of history imposed by potent arguments, which we shall show very soon.
This then sets the final stage for purifying the intellectual air by disinfecting emerging minds of his intellectual stench, denying him that perch from which he has purveyed the ceaseless chatter of grapevine hearsay dressed as analysis. Once this trivial debate peddler is reduced and quarantined to mediocrity, we can then move on to more serious discussions, keeping him at bay. This is what we began to do in our last article, which we must now finalize.
An analysis of “A critique of the Bluster of a Charlatan” exposes Fahnbulleh as critically wanting in strength of argument. He wastes considerable energy and space in attacking my person, spending scant efforts on adequately addressing the exposed contradictions, which have now drawn his venomous ire. This man is nothing more than an insult-pelting scalawag zonked in a stupor of self-importance. The bunkum he writes as analysis can never withstand the ray of enlightened criticism. We cannot allow modern Liberian history to be interpreted by such idiosyncratic wimp.
The reason is simple. Our people need serious answers to the many puzzles of our history. They are asking the hard questions. What went wrong in Liberia? Why did more than 300,000 people have to die? Who are those responsible for this mayhem? Who can our people trust to interpret their history? Are they to trust “historians” and “pundits” who themselves contributed to our tragedy? Who can they entrust with the future leadership of the country given all that has happened? These are the vexing questions that led me to denude Fahnbulleh of his bloated pretension of being some guardian historical interpretation.
Evidently dismayed and troubled by my expose, he begins his response by firstly enquiring into whether I exist. That leads him nowhere. The bandit learns that I am real and is frustrated by the news. He had originally planned a response based on attacking a veiled personality he had assumed was behind my article. He then misleads himself to believe I am a member of his fan club. He writes “[Samuel D. Tweah, Jr.] wants to claim political relevance by referring to me as ‘HB.’” This is laughable and further indicates the pettiness to which this man is accustomed.
My use of “H.B” is merely for contractive purposes and lacks any emotive content. One does not gain political relevance by merely referring to fakers. I have never valued the cacophony of claptrap he chatters. Sifting through his intellectual muck, I have always found them seriously wanting. Fahnbulleh’s arguments are slickly garbed in gaudy and insulting prose to beguile those who pay less than keen attention to the use of language and the movement of history. For me, this is unimpressive; a deceptive employ of the device of rhetoric, and I have zero tolerance for men who were such badge of dishonesty. The fact is that I merely abbreviated his name just as I would abbreviate his significance as a political commentator.
Unable to withstand the ceaseless intellectual bombardment raining battery on his numerous inconsistencies, this trollop seeks vulnerable refuge in spreading cheap lies. He writes, “this hustler called Samuel D. Tweah, Jr. took money from Taylor for his unsuccessful bid for the student leadership on the ticket of the NPP sponsored student movement called STUDA (Students for Democratic Alliance) and subsequently on graduation in 2001 was selected by Charles Taylor for a scholarship through the Family Planning Association of Liberia that got him to where he is at present. What shamelessness! If this brigand cannot report the simply truth as he learns it, how can he ever be trusted to report and interpret Liberian history? Does this buffoon believe such lie can ever pass for the truth? The records are clear and cadres from the University of Liberia know the facts.
They know of my principled resistance to Charles Taylor in the 1997 elections. They witnessed my numerous denunciations of the bandit under the palaver hut during numerous debates. They know how I came to the US and that I did not come on a scholarship. It is mortifying that Fahnbulleh would hatch up such humbug to duck the merciless intellectual fire now raging at his doorsteps. But then again it indicates his pristine penchant for frivolity. Isn’t this the same old game of lies and gossips he used against his Progressive colleagues and compatriots for which they now regard him as a pitiful lunatic? Having been hardened by the whiplashes of UL student propaganda, we can only brush this gaping lie aside, especially coming from this naïf. One can only wonder why he would he would involve the reputation of Family Planning merely to satiate his vengeful urge? But that’s something for Family Planning to deal with.
The truth is because Fahnbulleh and others hobnobbed with Taylor at the outset of his NPFL insurrection, they like to imagine everyone else did. In order to conceal all possible connections with Taylor, he feigns an extreme hate for the rebel, engaging in a Taylor bashing that is merely a façade. Many may have overlooked this and until now he has gotten away with it. But we shall expose it. He wonders why I categorize his opposition to Taylor as over-inflated. We now show why. In “the rotten maggots not the carcass” he writes:
I tried to warn the Libyans at the Mathaba that a fraud was being perpetrated on them, but Taylor had impressed a few of them with his elaborate lies. When I could not get them to understand that they were supporting an adventurer, I demanded to see their Leader, Colonel Gaddafi; but they refused and gave me the choice of accepting the bandit Taylor or leaving the country. I chose the latter. There was no way I could join an individual who openly expressed his contempt for the masses and said his ideology was getting rich quick.
Very good! You were thrown out of Libya because of a bandit. Could you not develop the hate at that moment and undermine the bandit? You left Libya knowing Taylor was an “adventurer” who had “openly expressed contempt for the masses.” What did you do then? Did you inform Samuel Doe or some others that an adventurer was preparing to loot and pillage the country? If you really believed Taylor’s ideology was “getting rich quick” did that not tell you that those who wish to “get rich quick” will do so at all costs? Was that not a sign to you that country was headed for danger? All the signs were visible. For you, Taylor was the lesser of two evils. It did not matter that the masses would perish in this wrong war because you too have openly expressed contempt for them when you write that the “downtrodden of society are that humiliated and degraded mass for whom
money means everything.” Is this the reason why you colluded against our people by failing to leak the plot that could have saved more than 300, 000 thousand lives?
You walked away from Libya feeling a sense of impending doom but did nothing to forestall the doom. Doom in which the nation would be pillaged; blood spattered all over the landscape, spilling from the mountains of Nimba and Gedeh to the coastal plains of Cape Mount; in which innocents would be maimed. The blood of martyrs-- Tonia Richardson, Pewee Lavala, Wuo Gabe Tarpiah, Gabriel Kpolleh, Jackson Doe, Nowai Flomo, John Fokpa, Moses Duopu and countless others— may have been spared had you exposed Taylor for his “ideology of getting rich quick;” their martyrdom saved for the real people’s struggle that was yet to come. I hear them shriek cries of betrayal in your ears! I feel them seethe with rage at your horrid silence! This is the burden of history under which you must grunt. This is the historical albatross which you must bear.
For how can you join us to celebrate these martyrs? How can you stand before mausoleums erected in their honor? Will you partake in their feast in which the Vai women supply the Gbasayama? The Grebo women the Palm Butter? Lorma Women the Torgborgee? How will you sing the lamentation to these stalwarts? We will be there to hymn the dirge to their valor; the paean to their sacrifice? Can you truly ululate the falling of these martyrs, having betrayed them? You may summon the will to join us in singing their praise, but will soon bow in perpetual shame when we reach that refrain where the people sing:
Long Before the War Hit
Fahnbulleh Saw the Danger;
He Knew Taylor’s Plan
But Dared Not to Leak It;
The Martyrs Were Deceived
But Struggled To Survive;
They Perished in the Wrong War
His Silence Was the Weapon.
But after all this betrayal the shameless Fahnbulleh would still write:
How callous and sadistic this vampire[Taylor] is who now
spins a web of lies to conceal his murderous adventures which
started from the time he exposed the entry of Podier and his
colleagues into Liberia to the Doe regime through Amos Gray
because Podier refused to accept him into his movement based
in La Cote d' Ivoire. What a perfidious fiend who feels he can
murder our compatriots with impunity!
You helped create the fiend! That is the verdict. This is the guilt you now carry on your shoulder. But again Fahnbulleh is guiltless for after all this tragedy, he still goes on to write: “are patriots to refrain from decisive action against injustice because people will die in the process? History does not move in this way?” So the death of the martyrs was justified because your “patriot Taylor” had to take decisive action against the injustice of Samuel Doe? Isn’t this the reason why you decided not to expose him? How now can you say you hate him so much?
For this you cannot you cannot write our history. You belong to that class of feckless bandits, who, callous in their greed for political power, have formed the shabbiest of unholy alliances with brigands of the goriest stripes, collapsing our people into mayhem. Yours is the prayer of Claudius in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” feeling guilty in the death of his brother:
Oh my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon it; …
Oh limed soul that struggling to be free
Art more engaged. Help Angels! Make Assay!
This is your perennial guilt added to that other guilt from the Pandema Road Massacre in which you led several militants to wasted martyrdom, cowardly escaping in the process leaving them to be butchered. When will you be the martyr?
But let’s now turn to deconstructing Fahnbulleh’s illogical reasoning. He provides gaping responses to the numerous inconsistencies I exposed. Because these contain the kernel of his dissolution, we must examine them thoroughly. He writes:
Samuel D. Tweah, Jr. berates me for praising those I condemn in the past. Why must I not change my position on people if the circumstances have altered? In life no one is totally evil or good. We must be flexible in dealing with people and not allow bigotry or intemperate rage to blind us to different realities. We are not intolerant bigots and thus do not stick to rigid positions when dealing with human nature….” “Does this man understand that he is writing about political developments that span 20 years? Does he not understand that people grow older and come to understand the world better? Does he now want to take a comment made about Madame Sirleaf in 1985 and a statement in her defense made in 2005 as proof of inconsistency? I thought we were supposed to be more reasonable in our judgment as we grow older?
What is this? Is he begging for forgiveness? Here the brat defends inconsistency on the basis of the need to be “flexible” and because no one is “totally evil or good.” So those we criticize yesterday can be praised today once the “circumstances have altered.” Determining when and how circumstances alter will have to be proven, but we leave that for now. Let’s address a philosophical question to our confused brother who scolds me for saying his hatred of Taylor is over-inflated.
Does Fahnbulleh believe Taylor is totally evil? Fahnbulleh’s answer must be no because for him “no one is totally evil or good.” Now are we to expect he will begin praising Charles Taylor in the future if he demonstrates remorse and apologizes for the atrocities he inflicted on the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone? Would such apology mean that “circumstances [surrounding Taylor] have altered?” If Fahnbulleh’s response is no, then that trivializes his argument that circumstantial change must compel one to be “flexible” and not to “stick to rigid positions when dealing with human nature.”
Since Taylor is human and definitely a part of human nature, if Fahnbulleh refuses to praise the bandit for such putative apology, would not Fahnbulleh be contradicting himself when he says “we are not intolerant bigots and thus do not stick to rigid positions when dealing with human nature….” And if he praises Taylor for merely apologizing would he not compromise his vaunted hatred of the man. So one sees that he is boxed by the absurdity and illogicality of this response.
This is the Fahnbulleh dilemma. His situation is complicated because he rejects consistency to flexibility, which allows him to somersault. The danger of being flexible based on circumstantial change is highly subjective. Who determines when circumstances alter? Is it Fahnbulleh? Is it Tweah? My determination might be different from his, and the consequences derived thereof might vary considerably. So it is far more important to stick to principle. The point is Fahnbulleh could have come up with far better responses to his intellectual flip-flopping. But again the man is logically weak.
Also, my criticism of Fahnbulleh’s vacillation is not based merely on the question of praising people he condemned yesterday. I grant that “people do grow up” except Fahnbulleh, and that they do make mistakes. But people “do not grow up” from a sweeping denunciation of an entire political class and revert to celebrating that class when nothing can be proven to have changed. Fahnbulleh deceives the audience by asking “does this man understand that he is writing about political developments that span 20 years? Does he now want to take a comment made about Madame Sirleaf in 1985 and a statement in her defense made in 2005 as proof of inconsistency?” No Fahnbulleh, we are not just talking 20 years. We are talking as recently as March 2005. In “Before the time comes” published in Mach of 2005 by the analyst, he writes of Madame Sirleaf thus:
On the other hand, the lady politician with her UN connections has deftly used her status on the Governance Reform Commission (GRC) to expose the corrupt practices of this administration…. The problem with her approach is that she runs the risk of alienating many who interpret her ambition as crudely opportunistic and see her condemnation of corruption as insincere.
This is because it is hard to explain why members of the GRC are being paid in U.S. dollars when the majority of Liberians in government are paid in Liberian dollars. Also, it is baffling why the UNDP would give the GRC half a million dollars when there is nothing concrete that this Commission has done to warrant such a huge amount. Are there other reasons for this lavish grant than the writing of periodic reports purporting to expose mismanagement and corruption?
In May of 2005, little over a month later he writes:
I would normally not come to [Madame Sirleaf’s] defense but since some want to condemn her as part of a collective, I will defend her.”
On the question of Liberia political class he writes in 1985 that:
The charade has long since ended. What grumblings there remain are the reflexes of frustrated politicians who helped orchestrate the farce, but were themselves duped in the end by more unscrupulous political tricksters. The tragedy of this whole affair is that the people, in their determination to oust the racketeers who now rule their country, are willing and ready to sacrifice their lives in defense of the domestic opposition, without realizing that those who now lead this opposition are the very people who through cunning and stealth imposed Sergeant Samuel Doe and his band of thieves on them [Liberian People] in the first place.
In March of 2005, showing a soupcon of consistency, which he will soon abandon, he writes:
One can argue that personal ambition and vain showmanship are two of the defining characteristics of the Liberian political class….
He continues: The presidency is not considered an office with monumental responsibility for social transformation but a job in which one makes money, seduces the women and wears expensive suits. We know that some of our militants of yesteryears have fallen victims to this virus. I saw them in action during the Sawyer interim presidency and it was laughable but pitiful. It is no more a matter of conviction and commitment to the downtrodden but a struggle for jobs—no matter who gives them.
In May of 2005 he abandons that short-lived consistency and asks: “How have the politicians failed Liberia?”
Now let’s plume this minefield of contradictions until it becomes crystal clear that the man who demands to parrot garbage as historical commentary lacks the capacity for consistent critical thinking. Let’s begin with his 1985 statement that those who “lead this opposition are the very people who through cunning and stealth imposed Sergeant Samuel Doe and his band of thieves on them [Liberian people] in the first place.” Interesting. But how can he still ask “how have politicians failed Liberia?”
He has answered that question already: because “politicians through cunning and stealth imposed Doe and his thieves on the people of Liberia!” Now does he retracts that statement? We need a retraction before “growing up and moving on.” He writes further that “in 1980, the military— that segment which was the most backward, uneducated, unenlightened and reckless—seized power. How and with whose help is still being researched and debated by scholars.” Hold your breath a minute. Were we not told earlier that leaders of the opposition imposed Doe on the Liberian people? How come suddenly we do not know with certainty how and with whose help Doe came to power?
Twenty years later in March of 2005, he implies the political class has failed by writing “one can argue that personal ambition and vain showmanship are two of the defining characteristics of the Liberian political class.” But then in the same vein and the same year, he asks “how have politicians failed Liberia?”
In his attempt to muddle the debate, he accuses me of being confused about political terminology. He writes:
Our man’s confusion probably comes from his inability to differentiate between ‘a political class,’ ‘an oligarchy,’ or ‘a ruling clique.’ A political class is that group which is conscious of its political responsibility, seeks power to further certain goals and objectives, and promotes its struggle on the tenets of an ideology.
OK professor, I agree I am a little “confused”. But let’s analyze our professor’s definition of a political class by identifying key phrases: “being conscious of responsibility,” “seeking power to further certain goals” “basing struggle on ideology.” Very good so far Dr. Fahnbulleh! But watch. He writes later, “any undergraduate in politics knows that ‘opposition political elements’ do not necessarily constitute a political class.” One wonders which undergraduates he is talking about. What confusion is this!!
Are not opposition elements those who “seek power to further certain goals” according to his own definition? In defining a political class he identifies the ability to “seek power to further goals,” as a characteristic. But then he says opposition elements who, by definition are supposed to “seek power to further goals,” may not constitute a political class. So according to him Progressives as an opposition group “do not necessarily constitute a political class.” Are not Progressives opposition political elements? Have they not been seeking power all their lives? Are they not conscious of their responsibility? Do they not possess an ideology? Then how can our learned professor Fahnbulleh imply that Progressives “do not necessarily constitute a political class?” But then watch this bomb. He writes:
The progressive forces in Liberia, defined as a political class, together with those other actors within this class have fought over the years with their eyes not on selfish ends but on their vision for a change in Liberian society based on their different ideological perspectives.
Now we are dealing with multiple layers of contradiction; the contradiction of contradiction. This truly is the operation of the Hegelian dialectic on the intellect of H. B. Fahnbulleh. You produce a thesis. Contradict that thesis and produce an antithesis. Conflict both the thesis and antithesis and emerge with a synthesis. Continue this thesis-antithesis-synthesis formulation until you make the most sense. This is Fahnbullehs’s application of the dialectic to his thought process.
This is what is happening here. The phrase “progressive forces in Liberia, defined as a political class” conflicts the clause “opposition political elements do not necessarily constitute a political class.” The statement “Progressive forces in Liberia have fought with their eyes “not on selfish ends” contrasts his earlier statement that “we know that some of our militants of yesteryears have fallen victims to this virus [making money, seducing women and wearing expensive suits]. I saw them in action during the Sawyer interim presidency and it was laughable but pitiful. It is no more a matter of conviction and commitment to the downtrodden but a struggle for jobs—no matter who gives them.” Where are we going with this? So who is more confused now? Tweah or the Professor? You be the judge.
But the confusion and contradictions are only just beginning. The Professor continues “cliques, oligarchs and bandits do hold power too but they do not necessarily constitute “a political class.” Bosh!! This gets more serious. Clicks, oligarchs, and bandits do hold power but they do not necessarily constitute a political class. Opposition elements do seek power but they too do not necessarily constitute a political class. Can this professor tell us then who necessarily constitutes a political class? Had he not already defined the progressives as a political class? Is he now emptying the entire political class? Can this man simply desist from writing gibberish and polluting our young minds?
These are but a modicum of the myriad contradictions that litter Fahnbulleh’s writings. He is a monument of contradictions. He contradicts is allegiances or alliances; conflicts his political analyses; and confuses his thought processes. Contradiction galore. Without a doubt, Fahnbulleh’s intellectual powers are massively descriptive but they are least analytical. Those who demand to interpret history cannot just describe; they must analyze and show adeptness at critical consistency. Fahnbulleh fails greatly on this score and for this he cannot interpret our history. This feat will have to be left to greater mortals!
For example, in one breath he argues “George Weah will be lucky to get ten percent of the popular votes if elections are held in October.” In another he vows “to oppose those who want to experiment with the destiny of the nation.” How can one vow to oppose an individual who “cannot win ten percent” of the votes? Who ever made vows to oppose Fahnbulleh who won 0.002% of the votes in the 1997 elections? He was just allowed to fritter, undisturbed. Also, he describes me as a “moronic poltroon” yet he fears my “rabid rhetoric” which has been “picked up by accident.” Wait a minute! Even a kindergarten kid knows who a moron is. No moron is capable of “rhetoric” not least the rabid kind. But this is again shows you not only contradiction, but broad daylight confusion in the cloying use of fatuous phrases.
Speaking of rhetoric, is this Fahnbulleh dreading rhetoric these days? Has not he deluded many over the years by the use of misguided and tawdry rhetoric? Or has he now sensed the emergence of men in this generation far more endowed in the display of rhetorical power, but who will only use it to edify and construct? Isn’t this the man who is supposed to rhapsodize audiences and awaken men to heights unimaginable? Or has his rhetorical power now faded into effeteness, frazzled by overuse, and viewed as nothing more than a mind-numbing concatenation of vacuous phrases bereft of meaningful action.
These are the babblers who have debased that once cherished device bequeathed to human civilization by the Greeks and Romans. When Pedicles or Cicero employed rhetoric, it was not to destroy, to heap insults on or at lash at compatriots who will be needed in future struggles: it was to inspire, to goad Greeks and Romans into the higher echelons of citizenship. Unfortunately, rhetorical copycats like Fahnbulleh have now made humanity to look down upon this great instrument.
On the question of the role progressive forces played in the execution of thirteen former government officials, Fahnbulleh writes “why would we as young revolutionaries settle on the elimination of only thirteen former TWP officials…?” He goes on to deny any involvement in the decision to eliminate the officers arguing “military regimes have their own internal dynamics…” and that progressives “made no pretense that they understood what was happening in the military council but tried to reduce the anarchy as much as possible.” He concludes that “we were serving in the regime and so must take responsibility for what occurred but it is wrong to say we ‘encouraged the slaughtering of former TWP officials.’”
One can only disagree vehemently. Given the influence and clout Fahnbulleh and his cohorts exerted on Doe during the initial days of the PRC, had they voiced vociferous opposition to any attempt to eliminate the former officials, Doe would have obliged. During the early days of the PRC, Doe leaned heavily on progressives for direction given his initial inexperience. Though Fahnbulleh now assumes some vague responsibility, at the time he and other progressives saw it fit to continue doing business with the regime, believing that things would normalize and the nation would heal. Did they not sense that the death of those thirteen would lay the basis of Doe’s eventual dictatorship? This was the formative stage of Doe’s evolving political mindset.
Had these progressives formed democratizing impression on this fledgling political mind by vehemently opposing the killing, given the extent of the influence they wielded at the time, the outcome if not radically different would have been credibly so. But how could he advise against the butchering of the thirteen when all Fahnbulleh cared about was groveling before a sitting head of state, currying favor to aggrandize power.
He was far too busy donning military uniforms, strutting his vain militant stuff as is his custom. Why did he not resign if he really believed in the sanctity of human life and the inviolability of the rule of law he now appears to champion? His departure from the PRC on those grounds would have marked him as a true democratic and revolutionary hero. But he remained there, to snivel, feeding on whatever crumbs fell beneath the table of power. When his political star finally descended, the bandit absconded under the ruse of “fleeing a military dictatorship.”
If this hypocrite was truly against those executions, why has he never included the thirteen officers among what he calls in “The nation is dying” “the martyrs of our history?” He writes:
The nation staggers from its multiple wounds, heading towards a precipice that leads to darkness and death. Then the women of Lofa screamed in anguish and we with our emasculated manhood stirred from our cowardly indifference and for once in our lives think of the children of tomorrow and pick up the emblem of the martyrs of our history: Blyden, Juah Nimley, Edwin Barclay, David Coleman, D. Twe, T. R. Bracewell, Kollie Tamba, S. Raymond Horace, Sr., Nete Sie Brownell, Du Fahnbulleh, Henry Zuo, Robert Sumo, Thomas Quiwonkpa, Robert Phillips, Wiwi Debbah, Wuo Garbe Tappia, etc. And behind the emblem we march, [ will he ever be a martyr, cowardly as he is?] untainted by tribalism or bigotry; for the blood that flows for freedom is colored red no matter who we are or where we come from.”
Lest he says they are among the “etceteras” what about his other list. He writes again:
There is a simple lesson from all tyrannies: the tyrants have no friends. They kill unconscionably because for them all human beings are expendable cannon fodder. Thus Dokie died, like Elmer Johnson, Moses Duopu, Jackson Doe and hundreds of thousands of innocent people. And Weh Syen, Henry Zuo, Robert Sumo, Harry Johnson and Nelson Toe are slaughtered based on lies and deception. And then followed Podier, Quiwonkpa, Charles Gbenyon and thousands of innocent citizens.
Ashamed of his guilt in the death of those thirteen he would ask, “why this selective bereavement after twenty-five years of massacre, murder, mayhem, death and destruction?” Look who’s now writing for “those who want to go on living in the maudlin agony of the graveyard, we have moved on even though we lost loved ones, relatives….” Look who’s now talking about selective bereavement. When last did you leave the graveyard of our history? Is it now we cannot talk about the dead whose death you could have prevented? You did not prevent the death of the thirteen officials. You did not prevent the martyrdom of the heroes of Taylor’s war? Why is it that every time you come under attack your response becomes “we have moved on?” No, we have not moved on Fahnbulleh, nor have we “grown up.” We will stay here to do battle.
There are many more grounds on which we could skirmish with this mountebank, but we retire our battery now, having inflicted severest casualty in decimating that vaunted perch from which he is wont to defame, malign, traduce and parlay balderdash as history. This babbler must rest assured that the turf to interpret modern Liberian history will be fiercely contested. Petty gossipers and men dealing in agitprop will be bulldozed to the fringes of historical relevance, their spluttering prevarications confined to the trash heap of history. The verities of the new order in Liberia demand far more serious chroniclers and pundits.
Men and women who, gauging an objective political distance, can amply document that tragic accident in which a coterie of self-seeking Progressives crash-landed the institutional vehicle of political change, unleashing a violent chain reaction that would occasion unimaginable plunder, mayhem, gruesome violence and massive deaths. These are the broad contours of the history that will be told. No amount of dudgeon Fahnbulleh heaps can disturb that consensus. These are the words that will reverberate throughout the country:
That the death knell of a decayed political culture has now been sounded. All that remains is for new generation forces to quicken that demise and inter the corpse. The byproducts of this systemic decay are fully known: rampant corruption, ruined infrastructures, gutted buildings, famished people, martyred men, abused rights and the many other woes. The forces of old must now capitulate.
Henry Boima Fahnbulleh, Jr., your lashes against the failures of your generation—the progressives, the politicians, the Doe’s, the Taylor’s—though sometimes belated, will still be accorded due kindness and respect by history. But you cannot turn your spent venom against patriots of our generation. These towering men and women will be jealously guarded and shielded from any fiendish and venomous assaults.
If your quiver has been exhausted from arrows in your interminable battles with tyrants, you cannot replenish same on these unblemished patriots!! The movement of modern Liberian history now awesomely rests upon their shoulders. On this score, we are prepared to do battle: to trade word for word, insult to insult, rhetoric to rhetoric; scouring intellectual grounds and erecting bulwarks to secure the vanguard march of the Patriot George Manneh Weah and other new generation revolutionaries; men and women endeavoring to manumit their people from eternal bondage!!
We are in full agreement when you say:
There are many young men and women who are growing up, conscious of the betrayal [by Liberia’s political class] and the prevailing injustices. Our duty is to identify them, engage them in serious political debates and burden them with the task of leadership in tomorrow’s struggle.
Yes! You are correct!! You have identified us. You have engaged us in debates. What now remains is to burden us with the task of leadership in tomorrow’s struggle.
In pursuing this struggle, we are mindful of the awesome challenges that lie ahead, but remain fearless in vanquishing any foe who dare to stand in the path of a people’s triumphant entry into that ever elusive land of freedom, democracy and development. This remains our battle cry!!
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