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."
Florida Museum Celebrates the Loss of Hagia Sophia
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
I rubbed my eyes in disbelief seeing a wall plaque at the Cummer Museum
of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida, explaining an artifact in
its "Ink, Silk, and Gold: Islamic Treasures from the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston" exhibit. The plaque that caught my eye praises the Ottoman Empire for having turned the Hagia Sophia church into a mosque. Its words:
In addition to their renowned patronage of architecture,
which yielded the conversion of the Church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul
into a congregational mosque, Ottoman sultans and elites supported
flourishing textile and ceramics industries.
Cummer Museum's celebration of the sack of Constantinople.
(What does "yielded the conversion" even mean? A search engine finds seven uses of this phrase in the English language, all connected to science.)
Hagia Sophia happens to be one of the oldest, largest, most
beautiful, most celebrated, and most important churches of all
Christendom. Built in the 530s in Constantinople, the capital of the
Byzantine Empire, it has always been the object of exceptional praise,
from ancient times (AD 563: "as you direct your gaze towards the eastern arches, you behold a never-ceasing wonder") to modern ones (2014: "In this paradigmatic building, beauty, wisdom and light became interwoven through the architectural structure").
The transformation of the Greek Hagia Sophia Cathedral into the Turkish Ayasofya Mosque did not take place gently. Fergus M. Bordewich describes the brutal shift that took place 564 years ago today:
On May 29, 1453, after a seven-week siege, the Turks
launched a final assault. Bursting through the city's defenses and
overwhelming its outnumbered defenders, the invaders poured into the
streets, sacking churches and palaces, and cutting down anyone who stood
in their way.
Terrified citizens flocked to Hagia Sophia, hoping that
its sacred precincts would protect them, praying desperately that, as an
ancient prophesied, an avenging angel would hurtle down to smite the
invaders before they reached the great church. Instead, the sultan's janissaries battered through the great
wood-and-bronze doors, bloody swords in hand, bringing an end to an
empire that had endured for 1,123 years.
"The scene must have been
horrific, like the Devil entering heaven," says [Roger Crowley, author
of 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West].
"The church was meant to embody heaven on earth, and here were these
aliens in turbans and robes, smashing tombs, scattering bones, hacking
up icons for their golden frames. Imagine appalling mayhem, screaming
wives being ripped from the arms of their husbands, children torn from
parents, and then chained and sold into slavery.
For the Byzantines, it
was the end of the world." Memory of the catastrophe haunted the Greeks
for centuries. Many clung to the legend that the priests who were
performing services that day had disappeared into Hagia Sophia's walls
and would someday reappear, restored to life in a reborn Greek empire.
