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."
Gelen says that he thinks a "campaign of intimidation" is underway against the religious of the monastery. "Bishop, monks, and nuns," Gelen continues, "are always threatened in the most direct way possible by the inhabitants of the village, and they do not dare present themselves at trial or defend themselves in some way. So for some time, the monks and nuns have not had the courage to leave the confines of the property." "In Turkey," Gelen explains, "freedom of religious expression is guaranteed by the constitution; but those who are not recognized as a minority do not exist, in practical terms. Now the Syriacs, unlike the Greeks and Armenians, are not recognized as a religious minority, although they have been living there for millennia. The purpose of the threats and the lawsuit seems to be to repress this minority and expel it from Turkey, as if it were a foreign object."
The Syriac community has high hopes in the European Union, which on February 11 is supposed to address together with the Turkish government the question of religious freedom and human rights for the non-Muslim minorities present in the country. "We hope not only that our rights will be recognized," David Gelen says, "but we are convinced that for the Turkish state, the time has come to recognize, accept, and protect the cultural multiplicity of the country, instead of fighting it. Turkey must decide whether it wants to preserve a 1,600-year-old culture, or annihilate the last remains of a non-Muslim tradition. What is at stake is the multiculturalism that has always characterized this nation, since the time of the Ottoman Empire."
Since 1923, when the Turkish state was created, the Syriac Orthodox have been dispersed in four countries: Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran. Yasar Ravi, president of the Syriac Orthodox community of Antioch, notes that the Treaty of Lausanne guaranteed certain essential freedoms for this minority, but "things have gone differently."
Since that time, there has been a constant exodus of the community toward central and northern Europe, especially Germany (where there are 20,000 Syriacs) and Sweden (70-80,000). In the middle of the 1960's, there were still about 130,000 of them in Tur Abdin; today there are just 3,000. "We have no territory, we are scattered throughout the world, but we are very united thanks to our linguistic, social, and cultural identity," Yasar Ravi continues. "As history teaches us, religion has always had a dominant role in civilization. Ours is without doubt a very religious people, and we are proud of speaking the language of Jesus: the language that, in terms of its diffusion, was essentially the English of the Middle East." Asia News
