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."
Ibrahim discussed the Palestinian Arab academic, Edward Said – a literary critic and "not a historian," – whose 1978 book Orientalism
criticized "European academics who studied the Orient." Said claimed
that Western scholars presented the "East as barbaric and ... primitive,
especially Islam," and were therefore "not objective." At the time, the
culture was ripe for Said's politicization of historical fact,
including tarring the term "Orientalist" as a pejorative.
Today, this
trend has reached a zenith in the current climate among leftist
academics and their fellow apologists. Western history is reframed
largely as "racist ... imperialistic ... [and] xenophobic," while
Islam's wars of conquest, which consisted of "nonstop violence," are
minimized or justified. The culmination of the mythmaking has produced
the "new" version of history in which Islam was "peaceful [and]
progressive," while Western Europe was the "violent" aggressor.
Islamic conquests that began with "the Battle of Yarmuk in the year
636," and were halted temporarily in the Siege of Vienna in 1683,
resumed their advance that included attacks by Barbary pirates against
the "infidels" on American ships in 1785. It then hit a pause that was
an "aberration," according to Ibrahim. "The Islamic world wane[d]" after
Napoleon's entry into Egypt in 1799, an event marked "the [beginning of
the] golden age for the Christian minorities of the colonial era."
Ibrahim said that jihadists like ISIS bolster their anti-Western
rhetoric with quotes hearkening back to Islamic leaders of the distant
past who fought against the "Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire" only a
few years after the death of Muhammad, Islam's prophet and military
leader. Ibrahim said, "So yes, to me, it's definitely a continuum ...
even if [Islam] took one or two centuries" off.
Ibrahim experienced firsthand the consequences of questioning
academia's mythmaking orthodoxy. After lecturing about his book on
Islamic warfare at the U.S. Army War College, Ibrahim was attacked for
disagreeing with those who charge that Islamic wars were entirely the
fault of the West.
Ibrahim said the excuse academics assign to "Western
machinations" is used as a rationalization "other than radical Islam to
explain ... what we're seeing today [that] is an identical duplication
of ... [what] Islam was doing ... for over a millennium." Myers referred
to the plethora of centers devoted to the "propaganda of Islamophobia
... tied to intersectionality ... [as] part of the ... leftist push to
silence critics." Ibrahim noted how the opposition, unwilling and unable
to debate, is silenced when they are challenged with "objective truth."
