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."
Muslim Placenames, “Seeds of Divisiveness” in the Qur’an, and the American Constitution
Monday, November 13, 2017
Jihad Watch : Finally, there is the argument, from toponyms, of a Muslim presence in America before there was a United States. Here John Hamed, Jr. descends
into the absurd: “Islam was here even before there was a U.S.A. There
are more than 500 places in the U.S. today with clearly Islamic names:
Mecca, Indiana; Medina in New York, Ohio and Texas; Toledo, Ohio;
Mahomet, Illinois; Islamorada, Florida; etc.”
Note that Hamed does not give any dates for when these place names
were first used. All of them appear to belong to the post-colonial
period. Apparently Hamed is also unaware that there is a long tradition
in this country of appropriating place names from the Bible, history
books, gazetteers from all over the globe.
We have many Old Testament
“Zions” and “Canaans” and “Jerichos” and “Lebanons,” and many towns
called “Paris,” “London,” “Berlin,” “Moscow,” “Amsterdam,” “Madrid,”
‘Rome,” Milan,” “Venice,” “Naples,” or “Holland,” “Denmark,” “Sweden,”
names chosen because the town’s founding fathers liked their sound, or
because someone came from there, or in some cases they wanted to signify
another kind of link, as with devout Christians who might choose to
give their settlement a Biblical place name.
There’s a China, Texas,
which has nothing to do with China, and two Calcuttas, one in Ohio and
another in Indiana, but no one from India was among their founders. It’s
hardly surprising that some settlers chose to name their town “Mecca.”
The very word has entered the language as a “center” for something, as,
“Silicon Valley is a Mecca for entrepreneurs” or “Nashville is a Mecca
for country-and-western singers.”
It could have sounded significant to
the people who first settled there. A “Muslim presence” does not enter
into it. “Medina,” like “Calcutta,” has been chosen as a town name for
its exotic sound. You can be confident that the people who named
“Medina, Ohio” or six other “Medinas” were not thinking of Muhammad or
of Islam; we can be certain that none of those who founded and named
“Medina” were Muslims, for had they been, Muslim writers would have made
much of it.
As for the place name “Toledo,” it comes from the Roman “Toletum,”
and though for centuries Muslims ruled the city, “Toledo” is not, as
John Hamed thinks it is, a Muslim name. And “Islamorada,” which Hamed
cites as a Muslim name because of the appearance in it of “Islam,” comes
from the Spanish “Isla morada” or “purple isle.” Should you wish to see
where John Hamed, Jr. obtained his list of “500 U.S. towns that have
Muslim names,” many of which are not Muslim at all (including all the
Indian tribes whose names are bizarrely claimed to be Arabic, and thus
offered as some kind of crazed proof that Islam has been in America
practically forever) simply go here. Read the “evidence.” You won’t know whether to laugh or cry.
