Not Good Enough for Singapore

In 1994, the brains in Mindef decided that the name 'reservist' was not suitable for us because it presented a 'psychological barrier' by suggesting that when a soldier completes his full time national service and goes into 'reserve' he is mentally not ready to be called up for action at short notice. Hence, we adopted the new name called ‘Operationally Ready NSmen'. Quite a mouthful isn't it?

I have always considered that line of reasoning a bit silly. If this logic is correct, then Israel, the country that first helped us to start our armed forces is in big trouble. In the past few weeks, they have been calling up their supposedly operationally-not-so-ready reservists to go into battle against the Hezbollah in Lebanon.


A Straits Times article of 8 August 2006

Anyhow, this is not the purpose of my post. I want to blog about the sad situation that Israel finds herself in today. In Singapore, we fathers tell NS stories to our sons. Over there, they tell real battle stories, and show real battle scars - that is if they make it back alive.

We should thank God that we have a good government here who have learned to live peacefully with our neighbours. What if we had some hot-tempered, fighting-cock type prime minister who responded tit-for-tat to the regular taunts of our closest neighbour's former prime minister who never tires of trying to pick a fight with us. Thankfully that megalomaniac has been replaced a gentleman; and a god-fearing one too.

May we never have to go the way of the Israelis.