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."
Saudi Arabia, to judge by the language of the report, vied with North
Korea as the worst offender. The Saudis, Rex Tillerson said, ought to
“embrace greater degrees of religious freedom for all of its citizens.”
He cited criminal penalties — but did not explain that for some of those
“crimes” the penalty is death — for apostasy, atheism, blasphemy, and
insulting the Saudi state’s interpretation of Islam, as well as
discrimination against, and attacks targeting, Shi’ite Muslims.
He did not mention the ferocious warfare now being conducted against
pockets of Shi’a resistance to the Saudi Wahhabis, that receives so
little attention, though he might have produced videos of the complete
flattening, in recent weeks, of the Musawara district, with its 400-year
old buildings, in the Shi’a town of Awamiya, which can be seen here.
And while limits on the religious freedom of foreigners was
mentioned, the report did not go into the details of how, in Saudi
Arabia, the observation of Christian worship, no matter if held behind
closed doors, is strictly forbidden and severely punished. A few years
ago, four Korean women were singing Christmas carols softly in their
rooms, far from any Muslims. The matawain, or religious police, who are
always on the prowl, overheard them, hauled them away, and they were
promptly deported for their caroling sins.
They may have been lucky; the
usual punishment for singing carols is 1000 lashes, which can prove
fatal for some. And before there were the Korean women, there were
British nurses, also caught celebrating Christmas behind doors. And that
1000 lashes is also the punishment prescribed for wishing anyone Merry
Christmas in the thoroughly Islamic state of Saudi Arabia.
Nor did the State Department report take up the perennial problem of
Saudi textbooks which preach hatred of Christians and Jews, about which
discussion has been going on for more than a decade, with the Saudis
constantly reassuring the Americans that they are making all the
necessary changes. In fact, those textbooks continue to include lessons
describing the Jews “as the sons of apes and pigs,” and of Infidels as
the “most vile” of creatures (which is just a quote from Qur’an 98:6,
though the State Department may not realize it). It has always been
State Department policy to work quietly with the Saudis on this textbook
matter.
But more than a decade of unhappy experience with suave Saudi
assurances of changes that are always just about to be made, but somehow
never are, or where the changes made are so slight as to be only
cosmetic, make clear that only a public discussion of these textbooks,
holding their contents up to widespread public view, and shaming the
Saudis in Western (though not of course Muslim) eyes, might have some
effect.
