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."
Jihad Watch : Islamic State (ISIS) caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead, killed by an American airstrike in northwest Syria. President Trump announced
this morning:
“U.S. Special operations forces executed a dangerous and
daring night-time raid in northwestern Syria, and accomplished their
mission in grand style. The U.S. personnel were incredible.”
But the question now should not
be avoided: why was al-Baghdadi hiding so close to Turkey? Were the
Turks protecting him? If not them, then who was? It strains credulity that
Turkey, with its interests in northern Syria, did not know he was there.
Al-Baghdadi was killed in Barisha in the Idlib province, a town of no
more than 2500 people right on the Turkish border. If the Turks didn’t
know that the world’s most wanted terrorist was there, they’re
incompetent beyond measure. If they did know, they’re complicit in
protecting him.
Given the track record
of the Turkish government in aiding the Islamic State, complicity is
much more likely than cluelessness. There ought to be a full
investigation of Turkey’s involvement, and if the Erdogan regime is
definitively found to have been protecting al-Baghdadi, Turkey should be
expelled from NATO and the sham alliance with the United States ended.
Given, however, the determined head-in-the-sand policy of the State
Department establishment, none of that is likely to happen.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State is
likely to go on pretty much as it has for the last year or two, after
losing almost all of the area of its former caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
If al-Baghdadi has a successor, he will be, like al-Baghdadi himself, a
caliph without a caliphate. The Islamic State is still very much a
presence around the world, but doesn’t control any significant expanse
of territory, as it did when Barack Obama was President.
In fact, al-Baghdadi’s death is
unlikely to affect ISIS as an international jihad terror group very
much at all. Al-Baghdadi was hardly ever seen in the last few years,
which was a function of his having a large bounty on his head, but it
also may have been chosen as a strategy for other reasons: the Islamic
State leadership may have decided that his power was enhanced by his
being more mythical than real — an omnipresent but gnomic presence a la
Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984.
Also, because the Islamic State
is an ideologically driven movement, it hardly matters whether he is
dead or alive: obviously the Islamic State has soldiered on without his
having become a familiar media figure, and has maintained its claim to
be the caliphate even without control of territory. It almost certainly
will continue to do so.
