Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Is there any legitimate reason he’s in court? What are the implications of such a trial being held, nevermind its outcome?
BAT YE’OR - Geert Wilders is a hero for those countless Europeans who cherish a free and democratic Europe — a Europe proud of its Judeo-Christian and humanistic values, its civilization, and its achievements in the field of human rights. But this is not today’s Europe. In today’s Europe, synagogues, Jewish schools, clubs, and cemeteries need to be guarded — as if going to a Jewish school or praying in a synagogue were a crime punishable by death as in Nazi-occupied Europe. Intellectuals, scholars, and those who protest the creeping Eurabization of culture and society are threatened, boycotted by their colleagues, thrown out of their jobs, forced to leave their families and go into hiding, or obliged to live with bodyguards. Wilders has devoted his life to freeing Europe from Eurabia’s clutches. To this titanic struggle he has sacrificed the security of his life and the joys of family. Threatened by a desert whirlwind blowing hatred upon Europe from the south, spending days and nights shielded by bodyguards, persecuted and tormented by his feckless Eurabian opponents, Geert Wilders incarnates the free soul of an unbending Europe.— Bat Ye’or is author, most recently, of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.
PAUL MARSHALL - The American media’s silence about the Geert Wilders trial is puzzling — the trial is explosive, much more so than most of America’s perennial “trials of the century.” Wilders, leader of the Freedom party, is arguably the Netherlands’s most popular politician, but for years he has had to live in safe houses, including on military bases. He now faces the possibility of imprisonment on charges of “group insult” and “incitement to hatred,” as defined by articles 137 (c) and (d) of the Dutch penal code, for his public speeches and op-eds criticizing Islam. Apart from its direct and immediate threat to free speech, the trial exposes the growth of political violence and repression in the Netherlands, long lauded as the most tolerant country in Europe, if not the world. Thirty years ago, I interviewed then–prime minister Dries van Agt simply by strolling into his unguarded parliamentary office and asking his secretary if he could spare me a couple of minutes.
Now it is a country where politicians and artists are targeted by vigilantes and the state. In 2002, popular Dutch politician and gay activist Pim Fortuyn was murdered by an environmentalist who took offense at Fortuyn’s criticism of Islam. In 2004, one of the country’s leading documentarians, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered, and almost beheaded, on the streets of Amsterdam in retaliation for a film he made about Islam (Submission). In 2006, a gathering of scholars and commentators critical of Islam and Islamism led the Dutch security service to invoke an alert level just short of “national emergency.” In 2008, the prospective release of Wilders’s film Fitna led to special sessions of the Dutch cabinet. The country’s best-known member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for many years had to live in hiding, and even briefly fled the country. This is the situation in the heart of liberal Europe. Continued here 234
