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."
Counter Punch : The diplomatic brouhaha between the US and India over a federal arrest and multiple strip-search and cavity search of a high-ranking Indian consular official in New York has exposed the astonishing hypocrisy of the US when it comes to the issue of diplomatic immunity, even as it has also exposed the ugly, brutal and sadistic truth about what passes for a “justice system” in 21st Century America..
It’s only two years since the CIA’s cowboy Raymond Davis killed two Pakistani citizens in the city of Lahore by shooting them in the back and whose claim to diplomatic immunity was upheld by President Obama.
Davis was masquerading as a consular official, but Obama declared that “We’ve got a very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future, and that is, if our diplomats are in another country, then they are not subject to that country’s local prosecution.”
Davis was no more a diplomat than Mickey Mouse. He was a trigger-happy Cowboy Intelligence Agency amateur spook who got away with murder because Washington arranged for payment of blood money to the victims’ families. After he killed the two young men he sent a message for rescue and a group of fellow spooks promptly barreled the wrong way along a road in an armored Land Cruiser and hit and killed a motor-cyclist and were promptly spirited out of the country in a US military aircraft to Afghanistan then back to the States.
Obama didn’t say anything about them being diplomats, of course, and the whole thing was a tragic farce.
And six months after Davis got home he was arrested for having beaten up a man in a carpark and pleaded guilty in exchange for a two year suspended sentence and a court order to attend anger management classes. You couldn’t make it up. But it’s unfortunate he didn’t attend such instruction before he was sent to Pakistan.
