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."
The following book review of my Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West was written by Terry Scambray and first appeared in the Sept. 2019 issue of the New Oxford Review: Raymond Ibrahim, fluent in Arabic, is an equal opportunity Middle
East scholar committed to truth rather than conforming to dangerous
fads.
In Sword and Scimitar, Ibrahim begins by explaining
Mohammed’s doctrine of jihad or “holy war”: “Whereas the rewards of the
pre-Islamic tribal raid were limited to temporal spoils and came with
the risk of death, the deified raid (jihad) offered rewards in the here and the
hereafter – meaning it was essentially risk free – and thus led to a
newborn fanaticism and determination.” In other words, robbery, murder
and enslavement were sacralized and then transformed into a prodigious
engine of Islamic conquest.
Conquest being the major feature of Islam’s 1,400 year history, Sword and Scimitar takes the reader on a tour – “a tour of force” – as represented by eight significant battles and an array of lesser clashes. Skillfully relying on first person descriptions, Ibrahim’s narration
of these battles is gripping and suspenseful while also evoking the pain
and terror of warfare. Especially after the current revival of jihad,
his recounting of these barbaric episodes and their consequences is not
comforting.
The battles are taken chronologically beginning in 636 with the
lesser known Battle of Yarmuk, a place now in Syria. This battle
displayed the fierce power of jihad by imbedding in the Western mind a
fear of Islam for the ensuing 1,000 years.
And with good reason, for as Ibrahim, channeling other historians,
reports, Yarmuk “had more important consequences than almost any other
battle in all world history,” for within 73 years after this Muslim
victory, the area from Syria west to Morocco, 37,000 sq. miles, was
permanently conquered by Islam! “Put differently, two-thirds of
Christendom’s original territory – including three of the five most
important centers of Christianity – Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria –
were swallowed up by Islam and thoroughly Arabized,” as Ibrahim puts
it.
However, despite Islam’s vast conquests, Constantinople, “Eastern
Rome”, with its wealth, strategic location and light skinned women,
prized as potential concubines and slaves, tantalized the Muslims. So in 717, Constantinople was sieged by the Arabs of the Umayyad
Caliphate. Unfortunately for them, their invading fleet was commandeered
by their own conscripted Coptic Christians, who jumped ship once the
opportunity presented itself.
Worse for the jihadists was the
annihilating weapon called “Greek fire,” akin to modern flamethrowers,
which along with a huge storm and debris from a volcano, wrecked all but
five of the attacking 2,560 Muslim vessels. That the Byzantines withstood this siege was a stunning setback over
an insurgent Islam which had it prevailed would have opened a crucial
portal into a then divided and vulnerable Europe.
