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 Saudis’ PR ‘Roads’ Show One of a series of lavish attempts to throw sand in the eyes of the West By Nina Shea
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Even
before the “Arab spring” revolts — indeed, ever since the 9/11 attacks
on American soil by mostly Saudi terrorists — the Saudi royal family has
assiduously waged a public-relations campaign to improve its image by
sponsoring major cultural initiatives in the West. In 2012 alone, these
included the opening of the King Abdullah interfaith-dialogue center in
Vienna, an Islamic-art wing at the Louvre in Paris, and “Roads of
Arabia,” an archaeological exhibition now on display in Washington,
D.C., at the Smithsonian Institution.
All these are sophisticated and lavish attempts to throw sand in our
eyes. At home, meanwhile, the Wahhabi-partnered monarchy has yet to shed
its grossly intolerant ideology and policies toward other religions,
which it so dangerously has spread to Muslim communities in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Somalia, and other countries. No church or other
non-Muslim house of worship is allowed in Saudi Arabia. This, despite
the fact that, as Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna observed
last June to an influential Washington audience, Saudi Arabia may now
be home to one of the Middle East’s largest Christian populations. Over a
million of Saudi Arabia’s foreign workers may be Christians, and some,
like the Filipino chauffeur who drove me around Riyadh in 2011, have
lived there for several decades. Foreign workers who attempt to gather quietly in house churches are
hunted down by the religious police. Such was the fate of 35 Ethiopian
Christians in Jeddah who were arrested, strip-searched, and jailed
without due process for nearly eight months last year for secretly
holding a Christmas-season worship service. Bibles cannot be distributed in the kingdom. Christian signs and
symbols cannot be displayed; religious garb, rosaries, and crosses are
prohibited from view. When an Italian soccer team came to play a match
in Saudi Arabia, it had to blot out part of the cross on the team’s
jerseys, turning their logo into a stroke instead. Even secular symbols
associated with Christmas are banned; one year, in the American school, a
Santa Claus barely dodged the religious police by escaping through a
window.
And Saudi policy is to spread this intolerance to other Muslim communities. Corner readers will recall that Cliff May reported on
a stark reminder of this: the March 2012 directive of the Saudi grand
mufti, who serves at the pleasure of the king and whose salary is paid
by the state, declaring that it was “necessary to destroy all the
churches in” the region. Part of the solution is the reform of public education, which
continues to indoctrinate students in violent and hate-filled teachings
toward the religious “other.” Repeatedly over several years, and despite
documentation
to the contrary, American foreign-policy experts have taken Saudi
disinformation about textbook reform at face value. As Stephen Schwartz
reports, Karen Elliott House’s otherwise informative new book, On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines — and Future, appears to fall for it as well. Some of the revised textbooks are now posted on the Saudi government’s official website.
So far, however, these do not include the problematic tenth-,
eleventh-, and twelfth-grade textbooks. These upper-grade texts include
lessons on the need to fight “infidels” and “polytheists” unless they
convert to Islam or take out protection contracts with the Muslims. One
text calls for punishing apostates with death unless they repent.
Another promotes “jihad” for “wrestling with the unbelievers by calling
them [to the faith] and fighting them.” And Saudi textbooks are
disseminated globally. As for the “revised” materials on the Saudi website, they too
continue to teach shocking lessons in intolerance. In a section
headlined “Beneficial lessons from the conquest of Khaybar,” for
example, one seventh-grade book issued by the Education Ministry now
instructs:
A. The Jews are a cunning and malicious people, and it is in their
nature to break treaties. B. People of the covenant (ahl al dhimma/Jews
& Christians) are permitted to remain in the Abode of Islam when
[the Muslims] have triumphed over them, and if it is to the benefit of
the Muslims. C. Joining into a period of agreement with the people of
the covenant (ahl al-dhimma/Jews & Christians) is permitted when
[the Muslims] have triumphed over them, and according to the will of the
Muslims’ leader. National Review
