BELEAGUERED interim Chelsea manager Rafael Benitez has had his ups and downs since taking over the London football club in November.
His team has won some, drawn some and lost some. He has come under fire from Chelsea fans since he took over and he has fired his own salvo every now and then against the fans.
But if there is one thing "Rafa" has done right was a press conference he gave a couple of weeks ago in which he said his criticism of the fans was merely meant to rally them round the team in order to help Chelsea finish in the top four of the Barclays Premier League.
"The fans are really important for the team. We need the atmosphere we had against Arsenal (in January) and Napoli."
Whether or not he was speaking the truth about his criticisms being meant to rally the troops is beside the point. The fact is that Benitez recognised that without the support of the fans, the team would not do as well as they could.
Having the support of the fans is one of the most important things for any sports team. A boisterous group of fans can be the "12th player" in a football team, or the "sixth" in a basketball team.
In much the same way -- only in a more critical area -- the security forces of any nation need to have that nation's citizens behind them.
One only has to look at the Vietnam War in order to understand this. The United States' involvement in Vietnam was a wildly unpopular war in America. Soldiers came under fire from American civilians and this translated into demoralised troops on the front lines.
Things became even worse when the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched what became known as the Tet Offensive in January 1968, deep in South Vietnamese territory. Tet is the Vietnamese Lunar New Year and, prior to 1968, this had always been a period of relative calm as both the North and the South celebrated the biggest holiday in Indochina.
What the Tet Offensive "proved" to the American people was that the US and its South Vietnamese allies were not winning the war. From then on, an unpopular war grew more and more unpopular as more and more US servicemen died.
Those who survived returned home not to a hero's greeting or ticker tape parades, but to scorn and derision, even among their own kin. Many would never recover from what they had gone through in Vietnam, more so because they did not have the support of loved ones.
Draw these parallels here, with what has been happening in the east coast of Sabah. There have been voices of dissent, of derision. There has been a lack of support for our men and women in green, white and blue (and black, in some cases).
Thankfully, this has only been a small segment of our generally patriotic society. But any negative element can be a cancer which can take on a life of its own and grow into some ugly, monstrous being devouring anything in its path.
There is nothing worse for a soldier or policeman than to know that his countrymen, the ones for whom he is fighting and dying, are not behind him.
The fact that their comrades have been killed. The fact that some of these comrades were decapitated and mutilated. These are not what demoralises a fighting man. These things make him fight harder. These things make him more determined.
These things are nothing compared to knowing that your countrymen do not support you. Why fight and die for someone who does not appreciate it?
The greater part of Malaysia is grateful to our security forces right now. On social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the outpouring of love for and pride in our men has been overwhelming, even from among those who have vehemently criticised them in the past for even the smallest mistake, real or imagined.
Everyone will have his or her opinion, of course. But an appeal must go out to all those with negative opinions to withhold them, at least for public consumption. Keep these opinions to yourselves.
We may not be over there fighting, but we still have a role to play. Let's do all we can to bring our boys home in one piece.
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