See Thai WWII history for proper understanding of ‘brutish and cruel’
Re: “Britain is no land of saints and gentlemen”, Have Your Say, February 18.
As a relatively new reader I have, with considerable resignation, embarked on the daily offering of readers’ letters as a stoic would, since it is a veritable gymkhana of one-trick ponies furiously whipping their hobby-horses which must by now be well rocked beyond even Thai safety limits while incessantly trotting out their tiresome threadbare mantras ad nauseam.
I have, however, been drawn to enter this pallid arena by an offering from Vint Chavala, who was replying to another serial contributor. Not having a scrapbook of previous letters to delve into I can only react to the contents of Vint Chavala’s latest missive, though I suspect his “trick” is to be exceedingly partisan and disputatious just for the sake of it, as this letter clearly demonstrates.
His declaration that the British Army was “one of the most brutish and cruel armies in the world” is as outrageous as it is untrue. Indeed, his attempt to pass himself off as in some way educated in matters of history is firmly blown out of the water by his highly distasteful assertion that the genocide perpetrated against the Rohingya was in some way caused by colonial boundaries. Given that the Khwae Yai River is in Thailand I suggest Vint Chavala examines this part of recent Thai history and the collaboration with Axis powers if he wants to actually understand the meaning of brutish and cruel.
Vint Chavala’s letter is nothing more than a baseless, mendacious, resentful rant against the UK which has incontrovertibly added much more of true value to the modern world than any other country on earth.
John Alexander Fitzpatrick
Bangkok
