Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen 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 soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt 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."
Reading Huntington in Syria: Islamic barbarians against Islamic barbarians by Giulio Meotti
Wednesday, December 04, 2024
Syrian rebel forces take Aleppo city center
INN : Distinguishing the right Syrian rebels from the wrong ones is a bit complicated. Opinion.ā Forget the Formula One World Constructorsā Championship and the Qatar
Grand Prix. The real race right now is the race to Damascus and, as
Erdogan puts it, āthere is no moderate Islamā.
Itās Black
Friday in Syria and in the West we sit at home watching the race,
wondering who will win, the bearded Salafists, the bearded āmoderateā
Muslim Brotherhood or the bearded Iranian Shiites.
Iran,
the regent of the Assad clan, committed so many resources to its assault
on Israel on October 7 that Erdoganās Turkey and the Emir of Qatar have
discerned an opportunity. And Hezbollah, Iranās main asset for
controlling Syria, is bleeding. So the Iranian militias are coming from
Iraq.
Figuring out who is on whose side in Syria is almost like a college exam in logic (or maybe Chaos Theory?) .
Hamas
is Sunni but is on the side of the Shiite axis of evil; Erdogan is
Sunni and is with both the Shiite axis of evil and the West and with
both Hamas and the anti-Assad Syrian jihadists who in Ukraine are
against Putin's Russia which is with the Assad clan and which uses the
Chechens against the Ukrainians who have come to Syria to help the
Muslim brothers against the dictator aligned with Putin.
In Syria there is not only a battle between the people and the dictator; it is also a religious war.
In
his book āThe ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday
Vision of the Islamic Stateā, William McCants quotes a fighter in
Aleppo:
āIf you think that all these mujahideen have come
from all over the world to fight Assad, you are wrong. They are all here
as promised by the Prophet. This is the war he promised, it is the
Great Battle.ā
