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."
The US has inched toward recognizing the genocide against the Armenians. Peter Lavelle, host of CrossTalk, asks his guests why Turkey has problems confronting its history.
Ronald Suny, an expert on Armenia with the University of Chicago, defines genocide. "The definition of genocide that is most often used is the official U.N. definition in the Genocide Convention of the late 1940s. And that definition argues that a genocide is the intentional killing of all or part of a designated people defined by their faith, their race, their ethnicity or their nationality," he said. Suny explains that during the First World War, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and was thus at war with Russia and most of Europe. "When the Ottomans were defeated at a major battle in the winter of 1914-15, the government saw the Armenians, who were on both sides of the Russian-Turkish frontier, as a potential 'fifth column' - a danger, an internal danger to their empire," he said.
"And they then carried out systematically, deportations of Armenians from eastern Anatolia, first demobilizing the Armenian soldiers who were serving with the Ottoman army, forcing them to dig their graves and shooting them. And then women and children, deporting them into the deserts of Syria, massacring them along the way and ultimately killing thousands and thousands when they reached Dayr az Zawr, the end point in the Syrian desert," he added. Suny says the case is clear - the action by the Ottoman Turks was genocide. "There is no doubt that there was, in fact, a state organized, systematic deportation and massacre of a designated population, defined by their religion and ethnicity, namely the Armenians," he said.
"And that it was carried out, initiated and organized by this government. So if you have a mass killing of an ethno-religious group, carried out by a government in order to eliminate those people from their homeland, or to destroy their political and cultural potential - that is, by the conventional definition and most scholarly definitions, a genocide," he continued. In full....
