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."
By the standards of
history, nothing between the two forces is as well documented as this
long war. Accordingly, for more than a millennium, both educated and
not so educated Europeans knew—the latter perhaps instinctively—that
Islam was a militant creed that for centuries attacked and committed
atrocities in their homelands, all in the name of “holy war,” or jihad.
In the words of Konstantin Mihailović, a fifteenth century Serb who was
forced to convert to Islam in his youth and made to fight as a
slave-soldier for the Turks until he escaped: “the Persians, the Turks,
the Tatars, the Berbers, and the Arabs; and the diverse Moors… [all]
conduct themselves according to the accursed Koran, that is, the
scripture of Mohammed.”
This long-held perspective has been radically twisted in recent
times. According to the dominant narrative—as upheld by mainstream media
and Hollywood, pundits and politicians, academics and “experts” of all
stripes—Islam was historically progressive and peaceful, whereas
premodern Europe was fanatical and predatory. Or, to quote the BBC,
“Throughout the Middle Ages, the Muslim world was more advanced and more civilised than Christian Western Europe, which learned a huge amount
from its neighbour.”
The reason for these topsy-turvy claims is that “Who controls the
past controls the future,” as George Orwell observed in his 1984 (a
dystopian novel that has become increasingly applicable to our times).
It is, therefore, unsurprising to discover that the greatest apologia
for politically active Islamists and their Leftist allies—and the first
premise for all subsequent apologias for Islam—is purely historical in
nature.
Recall, for instance, the most popular and oft-asked question to arise after the September 11, 2001 terror strikes: “Why do they hate us?”
Unbeknownst to most, this question presupposed—indeed, was heavy laden
with—a historical point of view that had been forged over decades and
largely remains unquestioned, even by critics of modern Islam:
BecauseIslam was tolerant and advanced in the past, this entrenched perspective
holds, its current problems in the present—authoritarianism,
intolerance, violence, radicalization, terrorism, etc.—must be
aberrations, products of unfavorable circumstances, politics, economics,
“grievances”—anything and everything but Islam itself. Simply put, if
they did not “hate us” before—but were rather progressive and
tolerant—surely something other than Islam has since “gone wrong.”
