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 Little Country That Could - Celebrities should visit, not boycott, Israel by Deroy Murdock
Monday, June 24, 2013
Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, has generated headlines lately by urging
singer Alicia Keys to avoid āsoul dangerā and cancel her July 4 concert
in Tel Aviv. Keys and other celebrities should ignore Walker and visit
Israel. They may be amazed at what they discover. I was fortunate
to see Israel for the first time last week, thanks to the America-Israel
Friendship League. Five of the eleven journalists on AIFLās fact-finding trip were new here. Keys and other artists likely would find Israel at least as surprising as we did.
First and foremost, Israelās omnipresence in the U.S. media makes it
sound like a superpower. But as much as anything, Israel is impressively
compact. At just 7,992 square miles, it is slightly larger than Clark County, Nevada (greater Las Vegas), but smaller than New Hampshire. Israel is not just small. Itās svelte. At its thinnest point, near
Netanya ā just north of Tel Aviv ā Israel spans just nine miles. The
land separating Israelās Mediterranean beaches from its border with the
Palestinian Authority covers roughly the same distance as does Manhattan
between Battery Park and the Apollo Theater on 125th Street, or Los
Angeles from the Santa Monica Pier to the La Brea Tar Pits. Conquer
those nine miles, and you chop Israel in two. Given this existential
danger, the late foreign minister Abba Ebancalled this and the rest of Israelās narrow waistline its āAuschwitz boundaries.ā
Nevertheless, Israel is the little country that could. Within a desert that is hostile in every sense, Israel has become a prosperous nation with a per capita income of $29,512, its Central Bureau of Statistics reports. In 2012, Israelās GDP expanded by 2.7 percent, while Americaās grew just 2.2 percent. Israelās unemployment rate is 6.9 percent, vs. 7.6 percent in the U.S. This start-up nation has pioneered plenty, including drip irrigation, the computer flash drive, and the PillCam, which lets doctors remotely examine a patientās digestive tract after he has swallowed an aspirin-sized camera. Continue here to the article in full.......
