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 genocide of Yezidis is far from over. It is still ongoing!
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Yezidis were brutalised after ISIS took control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria (Image Source: NY Times)
Contrary to the popular notion that the atrocities inflicted on Yezidis
have stopped with the fall of ISIS, it has anything but.
The successive
governments in Iraq have displayed blithe disregard for the concerns
raised by the Yezidis, with resettling and re-empowering Yezidis
conspicuously absent from the list of the priorities.
Mass grave in Sinjar bears testimony to the horrors inflicted on Yezidis
The genocide of the Yezidis began on August 3, 2014, in Sinjar and
surrounding areas in northern Iraq. The Islamic State is responsible for
the Genocide. In 2016 and 2017, the United Nations announced that the
genocide is still ongoing. There was systematic murder and rape,
separated into men and women: the men were killed and the boys used as
child soldiers, the women and girls were loaded onto buses and older
women were killed, and the rest were sold into slavery and
systematically raped and mistreated.
According to the UN, over 5,000 Yezidis were murdered and over 7,000
Yezidi women and children were kidnapped. A Yezidi mass grave in the
Sinjar region bears testimony to the horrors suffered by the Yezidis at
the hands of their Islamist perpetrators. A picture of the grave shows
bones of the victims jutting out of the mass grave in which several
dozen Yezidis were buried after being massacred.
