Chapter 8: Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword!
Monrovia, Liberia Sunday, September 9,
1990.
There’s nothing like the sound of rapid
gunfire to get a person’s attention! Samuel Kanyon Doe’s lightly armed guard
were being ambushed by the more heavily armed members of the Independent
National Patriotic Front of Liberia, or the INFPL, led by one Prince Yormie
Johnson. Bullets were flying like fireflies. In no time at all Johnson’s men
captured Doe and his remaining men. Johnson ordered his men to shoot them.
First they shot them in ones and twos. Then, to speed things up, they shot them
in whole groups. The echo of the last shots fired began to fade into the
distance.
The gun-smoke began to clear leaving only
the smell of cordite in the Monrovian air as a reminder of what had just taken
place. O, and all the dead bodies, over eighty of them! Liberia had a new
leader.
President James Monroe prophetically said,
“It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate
into a populace [i.e., a rabble!], that they are incapable of exercising …
sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found.
The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement
and ruin.”
Ignorance, corruption, degeneration and
debasement all waved their flags in the ruined City of Monrovia, that city
named after James Monroe, as usurpation, with its attendant usurpers, as it
were, marched up its streets.
Samuel Kanyon Doe had usurped and toppled
the Tolbert government. Now Prince Yormie Johnson was usurping and toppling the
Doe government, as Liberia continued its descent into the inferno to the cheer
of the rabble…
Samuel Kanyon Doe, President of Liberia,
sat in the middle of the room surrounded by unfriendly armed men dressed in
military uniform. His hands had been tied behind his back and he had wounds in
his legs that were oozing blood as he sat uncomfortably on the floor.
Facing him, seated on the other side of a
desk was a Budweiser-swilling man in army fatigues. He was uttering threats at
the man who had been in power in Liberia for the previous ten years. This was
Prince Yormie Johnson, the leader of a breakaway group called the Independent
National Patriotic Front of Liberia (IPFL). He continued railing against the
helpless Doe. On the front of his camouflage-hat glinted a single silver star,
as on the nation’s flag, representing Liberia. Prince Johnson was Liberia’s new
self-proclaimed leader!
“Prince, Prince, let me speak!” yelled the
frantic and distraught President. Prince
Johnson simply continued swigging his American beer nonchalantly. A
nonuniformed young man stood by his side. Multitasking obviously was not this
young man’s area of expertise. For he fanned Johnson with a rag in his right
hand, while holding a loaded handgun in his left, which was precariously waving
every which way. Another non-uniformed sycophant periodically mopped Johnson’s
sweaty brow for him with a cloth. And yet another would supply another followed
by another can of beer within his easy reach. Obviously, it was hard labor
supervising your pack of hyenas on the finer skills of torture!
“I want to say something… We are all one!
We are all one!”
But Doe’s cries fell on deaf ears. Prince
Johnson, and the collective multitude of his soldiers in that room, were
unmoved…
Amazon Australia: https://tinyurl.com/yb5whvxx
No comments:
Post a Comment