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."
Satirists over Terrorists - Honor the victims by exercising free speech.
Thursday, January 08, 2015
National Review : Twelve people were killed today at the Paris office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for mocking Islam and Mohammed and thereby offending their murderers.
Let us therefore begin by considering blasphemy and other offenses. Someone who kills another human being for blasphemy grievously offends his own God. God will respond to insults in His own good time and in His own ways, which may sometimes surprise us when we know them.
But people of faith can be reasonably sure that He will be harsher toward those who murder in His Name than toward those who insult Him.
A religion that commands murder as the punishment for blasphemy offends the God it professes to worship. In reality, it worships the Devil. And by such deeds as the half-random murders of innocent people ye shall know that truth.Is Islam that religion?
For most of the worldās 1.6 billion Muslims, it is not. They follow the precepts of the Koran and seek to live harmoniously alongside their infidel neighbors, and where two Koranic interpretations clash, they choose to believe the one that conforms more to the civil laws and social customs of their societies.
Most of the time they donāt ponder much on religious texts but get on with the daily business of living.That is not so, however, for a large minority of Muslims ā maybe hundreds of millions worldwide ā who cleave to interpretations of their faith that enjoin murder, rape, torture, and cruelty as pious, even mandatory, acts.
They take their diabolic faith seriously, and the result is what we saw in Paris today.
Thus, there are in practical terms two Islams ā a religion, if not of peace, then of peaceful accommodation, and a religion of death.
On the eve of the Paris murders, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi attended the Coptic Christmas Mass in Cairo ā the first Egyptian president to do so ā and reached out to these infidels in the clearest terms:
āWe will build our country together. We will accommodate each other. We will love each other.ā
Itās inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing, and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!
That thinking ā I am not saying āreligionā but āthinkingā ā that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.
Itās antagonizing the entire world!
Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the worldās inhabitants ā that is 7 billion ā so that they themselves may live? Impossible!
I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema ā Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which Iām talking about now.
All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.
