Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen 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 soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt 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."
Letting Our Enemies Get Away with Murder By Clifford D. May
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Last week, Manssor Arbabsiar pleaded guilty to
plotting what U.S. officials have termed āa significant attack in the
United States.ā Attorney General Eric Holder called
the Iranian-born Americanās admission āa reminder of the exceptional
efforts of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies in protecting
America against terrorist attacks.ā Yes, thatās quite right. Holder
added that this outcome demonstrates that the U.S. will hold
āaccountable those who plan such actions.ā No, thatās patently false.
Arbabsiar has admitted that he was working at the direction of the Quds
Force ā the most elite branch of Iranās powerful Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps. The IRGC reports directly to Iranian Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Is there anyone who seriously believes that
Khamenei, the IRGC, or the Quds Force will be held accountable? Is there
anyone who seriously believes the U.S. government will even try?
Fecklessness in response to attacks on Americans is a bipartisan
tradition going back well over a quarter century. For example, in 1973,
the Palestine Liberation Organizationās Black September faction
assassinated the U.S. ambassador to Sudan, Cleo Noel, as well as Deputy
Chief of Mission George Curtis Moore. As my colleague Lee Smith writes:
The State Department knew from the very outset of the attack that
Yasser Arafat was personally directing the operation, but neither Nixon
nor any other American president ever punished the PLO chairman, who
lived to become a favored guest in the Clinton White House.
Ten years later, after the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed,
killing 241 Marines, President Reagan vowed: āThose who directed this
atrocity must be dealt justice, and they will be.ā But justice was never
dealt to Hezbollah ā now the best-armed, deadliest, and most powerful
faction in Lebanon ā or to Iranās rulers, on whose instructions
Hezbollah carried out the slaughter.
In 1996, Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, the āBlind Sheikh,ā was
sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1993 bombing of the
World Trade Center. But his terrorist organization, al-Gamaāa
al-Islamiyya, was in no way held accountable, and in 1997 it was
responsible for the massacre of 58 foreign tourists in Luxor. Last year,
after the fall of the Mubarak government, al-Gamaāa al-Islamiyya
established an Egyptian political party, and its current leader, Sheikh
Rifaāah Taha, was among those who organized the attack on the U.S.
embassy in Cairo on the 9/11 anniversary ā an attack that included the
raising of an al-Qaeda flag above the compound.
Also in 1996, 19 American servicemen were killed at Khobar Towers in
Saudi Arabia. According to Louis Freeh, who was FBI director at the
time, President Clinton took no actions ā not against those responsible,
and not against those who sent them. Clinton refused even to ask the
Saudis to allow FBI agents to question suspects they were holding.
(Freeh noted, however, that Clinton did ask Crown Prince Abdullah for a
contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library.)
Immediately following the attacks of 9/11, President George W. Bush declared
that the U.S. would no longer distinguish between terrorists and
terrorist masters. He told a joint session of Congress: āFrom this day
forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will
be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.ā But Bush never
fully implemented that policy, and President Obama rejected it outright.
The killing of U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens along
with three other Americans evoked this pledge from Vice President Joe
Biden: āWe will find and bring to justice the men who did this.ā By now
it should be clear that we are menaced not just by āthe menā who carry
out such attacks ā but by the organizations, regimes, and ideologies behind them.
The plot for which Manssor Arbabsiar will go to jail was not
authorized by some rogue faction beyond the control of Iranās rulers.
Rather, those rulers should be held responsible for their plan to
explode a bomb in a restaurant in the capital city of the United States
in order to assassinate the Saudi ambassador along with everyone else in
the immediate vicinity. Once upon a time this would have been called
what it is: an act of war.
Also last week, the U.S. Treasury Department attempted to call
attention to the fact that Iran continues to give safe haven to senior
al-Qaeda operatives ā operatives who maintain a ācore pipelineā that
moves āfunding and fightersā to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere. āWe will continue targeting this crucial source of al-Qaedaās funding
and support, as well as highlight Iranās ongoing complicity in this
networkās operation,ā said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial
Intelligence David S. Cohen. Three times in less than two years the
Treasury has designated al-Qaeda operatives in Iran, according to Thomas Joscelyn, a colleague at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who keeps careful track of such things.
So here are a few conclusions that should, by now, be apparent: (1)
Iranās rulers collaborate with al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization with
which the Obama administration says we are at war. (2) Iranās rulers,
the worldās leading sponsors of terrorism, do not hesitate to plot
terrorism on American soil ā confident they will pay no price. (3)
Iranās rulers are pursuing nuclear-weapons capability and, if they
achieve that goal, they will become much bolder and more dangerous. Itās time we grasped this, too: Swatting mosquitoes and shooting the
occasional crocodile takes you only so far. At some point it becomes
necessary to devise a strategy to drain the swamp. National Review.ā Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security.
