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."
Turkey: Erdogan recites Qur’an inside Hagia Sophia in honor of “Istanbul’s conqueror”
Monday, April 02, 2018
Jihad Watch : Nowadays Erdogan frequently invokes and glorifies Turkey’s Ottoman
past, reinforcing the impression that many hold, that he is intent on
restoring the caliphate in Istanbul and maybe even declare himself
caliph.
In any case, when he enters the Hagia Sophia and dedicates his
Islamic prayer to “Istanbul’s conqueror,” he is inviting people to
remember the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinople.
In my forthcoming book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS (which you can preorder here),
I recount how, after over seven hundred years of trying, the warriors
of jihad finally entered the great city on May 29, 1453.
When they did,
they made the streets run with rivers of blood. Muslims raided
monasteries and convents, emptying them of their inhabitants, and
plundered private houses. They entered the Hagia Sophia, which for
nearly a thousand years had been the grandest church in Christendom. The
Muslims then killed the elderly and weak and led the rest off into
slavery.The Byzantine scholar Bessarion wrote to the Doge of Venice in July 1453, saying that Constantinople had been.
…sacked by the most inhuman barbarians and the most
savage enemies of the Christian faith, by the fiercest of wild beasts.
The public treasure has been consumed, private wealth has been
destroyed, the temples have been stripped of gold, silver, jewels, the
relics of the saints, and other most precious ornaments. Men have been
butchered like cattle, women abducted, virgins ravished, and children
snatched from the arms of their parents.
When the slaughter and pillage was finished, Mehmet II ordered an
Islamic scholar to mount the high pulpit of the Hagia Sophia and declare
that there was no God but Allah, and Muhammad was his prophet. The
magnificent old church was turned into a mosque; hundreds of other
churches in Constantinople and elsewhere suffered the same fate.
Millions of Christians joined the ranks of the dhimmis; others were enslaved, and many were killed.
These are the glories Erdogan was invoking. “Turkish president recites Muslim prayer at the Hagia Sophia,” Associated Press, March 31, 2018 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):