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."
The Wages of Libya - Careers have ended over less than the administration cover-up by Victor Davis Hanson
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
We
have had ambassadors murdered abroad before, but we have never seen
anything quite like the tragic fate of Chris Stevens. Amid all the
controversy over Libya, we have lost sight of the human ā and often
horrific ā story of Benghazi: a U.S. ambassador attacked, cut off and
killed alone, after being abused by frenzied terrorists, and a second
member of the embassy staff murdered, as two American private citizens
rushed to the rescue, heroically warding off Islamist hit teams, until
they were overwhelmed and also killed.
Seven weeks after the tragedy in Benghazi, new government narratives
just keep appearing, as various branches of government point the finger
at one another. Now the president insists that āthe minuteā he āfound
out what was going onā he gave āvery clear directivesā to āmake sure
that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.ā The
secretary of defense argues that he knew too little to send in military
forces to save the post. Meanwhile, we are hearing from other sources
that the beleaguered compound in extremis was denied help on three
separate occasions, and there are still more contradictory accounts. When the government
systematically misleads and cannot establish a believable narrative,
almost everyone involved is eventually tarred. The final chart of those
officials in the Nixon White House who were devoured by Watergate was
vast ā and so it is becoming with the disaster in Libya. If we have
learned anything from Watergate and Iran-Contra, it is that the longer
officials deceive and obfuscate, the greater the number of wrecked
careers and reputations. Most likely, the political wing of the White House almost immediately
made a decision that the attack on our Benghazi consulate should not
endanger the conventional narrative of a successful commander-in-chief ā
ahead in the polls in part because he had highlighted a supposedly
successful foreign policy. Key to that story was the notion that the hit
on bin Laden and the drone attacks on other Islamists had rendered
al-Qaeda all but impotent. In addition, the administrationās supposed
lead-from-behind strategy in Libya had served as a model for energizing a
democratic Arab Spring. Commander-in-Chief Obama was intent on
reminding the country of his competence and toughness as an
international leader, and especially of his wise reluctance to rush into
areas of instability. In such a landscape, Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans
were brutally murdered. And almost immediately it was clear that the
ambassador had earlier warned that Libya was descending into chaos and
that Americans were not safe there ā only to have his requests for
further protection rejected.During the actual assault on the consulate, a real-time video,
streams of e-mail exchanges, and surveys of Islamist websites confirmed
that al-Qaedists were carrying out a preplanned assassination ā and over
the next seven or eight hours it became clear that our staff was in
dire need of military assistance that was somehow never sent.
Then for
nearly two weeks, the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Press Secretary Jay
Carney, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice advanced a counter-narrative that
simply could not have been true: A spontaneous demonstration over a
two-month-old video ā just happening to coincide with the anniversary of
9/11 ā got out of hand as some disruptive protesters showed up with
machines gun, mortars, and RPGs and began killing Americans. Since it
was an American religious bigot who had prompted such terrible but
ānaturalā riots with his video that ridiculed and injured Islam, we
should apologize for the uncouth among us in the strongest terms. Obama, Clinton, Clapper, Rice, and Carney strove to outdo each other
in damning the obscure video maker ā to such an extent that he was
summarily arrested on a supposedly outstanding probation charge. The
message? Ambassadors die and careful U.S. foreign policy is undermined
when right-wing bigots abuse their free-speech rights.Yet almost all of that story is untrue, and it will come back to
haunt all those who either by intent or through ignorance engaged in the
cover-up. Review the following spinners. President Obama still does not grasp the significance of Libya. When
he calls the attacks there and in Egypt ābumps in the roadā or ānot
optimal,ā and asserts that they will not play much of a role in the
final weeks of the campaign, he sounds either callous or naĆÆve or both.
Collate the administrationās statements over the two weeks following the
attacks, and they simply cannot be true. The months-old video proved
just too much of a temptation for the president to resonate the themes
of his Cairo speech in damning uncouth Americans for offending Muslims.
When the president claims that he ordered everything to be done to save
the compound, he must be aware that subordinates who did not in turn
give orders that relief be sent will eventually come forward to either
affirm or deny his statement.
His further problem is that lax security,
administration misdirection, and hesitancy to aid the beleaguered all
feed into the earlier attitudes framed by āoverseas contingency
operations,ā āman-caused disasters,ā āworkplace violence,ā promises to
try KSM in a civilian court, the al-Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech,
and other efforts to contextualize and airbrush radical Islamās
terrorist assault on the West. In other words, fairly or not, we can
discern a logic to why the president would not be candid and accurate
about Benghazi. National Review
