Nobody is perfect

LETTERS

When you admire a person, you make him/her an idol; a bad mistake. You should know nobody is perfect. We must not make anyone a god. Saints are not gods. Heroes make mistakes.

Recently, some of us are having a difficult time understanding the leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi. We admired her so much that we gave her the Nobel Peace Prize and honorary Canadian citizenship. Why doesn’t she stop violence against the Muslim minority Rohingya? Should she be stripped of all those honours?

I can list many examples of the same mistakes: Ugandan President Yoweri Moseveni, who saved his country from the butcher Idi Amin; Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who brought order after the genocide of Tsusis. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who ended the minority white rule in Rhodesia in 1980.

When Mugabe brought in the North Korean 5th Brigade and bombarded and slaughtered the minority Matebele people, we did not condemned him. We said nothing because Mugabe was a hero. We in the West praised those African leaders then, but now they are an embarrassment. They were heroes, but now they are power-hungry dictators. They must not stay on the pedestal. But why didn’t we condemn them then? We haven’t admitted our mistakes.

When I was a part of the team tackling famine in Ethiopia during the 1980s, we were criticized by many “progressive” people in the West who supported the independent movement of Eritrea called “EPLA.” It’s now one of the most brutal regimes that produces many refugees who are trying to cross the Mediterranean sea.

We in the western countries do not have all that clean a record either. Are we not lucky that King Edward, the Queen’s uncle, abdicated? He loved Nazi Germany and admired Hitler. What if he hadn’t? The controversies about names and statues abound: Father of Confederation John A. Macdonald, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, etc. Now some Oxford University students demand the change of the name “Rhodes Scholar” because of what Cecil Rhodes did in Africa.

Historian Margaret MacMillan raises an interesting question in her book, “The Uses and Abuses of History.” She mentions the Pope apologizing for the Crusade and admitting that Galileo was right; Bill Clinton apologizing for slavery; and Tony Blair for the Irish famine. And she argues that learning from history is dangerous, but we must learn from it, because no human is perfect.

Tadashi (Tad) Mitsui

Lethbridge