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."
Egypt, the Brotherhood is an enemy of Democracy by Andrew C. McCarthy
Sunday, December 09, 2012
As
Egypt under the heel of Mohamed Morsi unravels, here’s the late-breaking
news: The Muslim Brotherhood is the enemy of democracy. This has always been obvious to anyone who took the time to look into
it. Nevertheless, it has not been an easy point to make lo these many
years. Even as the Justice Department proved beyond any doubt in court
that the Brotherhood’s major goal in America and Europe — its
self-professed “grand jihad” — is “eliminating and destroying Western civilization,” to have the temerity to point this out is to be smeared as an “Islamophobe.” That’s the Islamophilic Left’s code for “racist.”
Nor is it just the Left. Like the transnational progressives who hold
sway in Democratic circles, many of the neoconservative thinkers who
have captured Republican foreign-policy making encourage “outreach” to
“moderate Islamists” — a ludicrously self-contradictory term. The idea
is to collaborate in the construction of “Islamic democracies.” That’s
another nonsensical term — to borrow
Michael Rubin’s quote of a moderate Muslim academic piqued by the
encroachments of Turkey’s ruling Islamists, “We are a democracy. Islam
has nothing to do with it.” That is clearly right. Yet, to argue the
chimerical folly of the sharia-democracy experiment is to be demagogued
as an “isolationist.”
It is as if the Right can no longer fathom an engaged foreign policy
that concentrates solely on vital U.S. interests and treats America’s
enemies as, well, enemies.
Of course, it is neither
Islamophobic nor isolationist to observe that Islamic supremacism is
derived from literal Muslim scripture; that it is a mainstream
interpretation of Islam whose adherents, far from being limited to a
“violent extremist” fringe, number in the hundreds of millions and
include many of Islam’s most influential thinkers and institutions.
These are simply facts. Nor is it Islamophobic or isolationist to
contend that any sensible engagement with Islamic supremacists — very
much including the Muslim Brotherhood — ought to be aimed at their
marginalization and defeat, not their cultivation and empowerment. This
is not a popular view; opinions amply supported by unpleasant facts are
rarely popular. But following it would strengthen pro-Western Muslims
while promoting an American global engagement that is essential,
effective, and affordable. That is the very antithesis of Islamophobia
and isolationism.
The central contention here has been that the Muslim Brotherhood is
an innately, incorrigibly Islamic-supremacist outfit. Wherever it
establishes a presence, it seeks — as gradually as indigenous conditions
require, and as rapidly as they allow — to implement its repressive
construction of sharia. Wherever it gets the opportunity to rule, it
uses its power to impose this sharia, despite resistance from the
society’s non-Islamist factions.
This is not a mere theory. Egypt, the world’s most important Arab
country, is violently convulsing before our eyes in direct reaction to
the suffocation that is Islamist rule. So, will we finally take the
lesson? Will we finally come to understand why democracy and Islamic
supremacism cannot coexist? Western democracy has Judeo-Christian underpinnings. At its core is
the equal dignity of every person. This sacred commitment, ironically,
enables our bedrock secular guarantee: freedom of conscience. It is
anathema to the Brotherhood. As their guiding jurist, Sheikh Yusuf
Qaradawi, teaches: “Secularism can never enjoy general acceptance in an
Islamic society.” This is because “the acceptance of secularism means
abandonment of sharia.” National Review
