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."
RoP : Not only
were Christians losing their lives in their own lands to the Muslim advance, but
pilgrims to the Holy Land from other parts of Europe were being harassed,
kidnapped, molested, forcibly converted to
Islam and occasionally murdered. (Compare this to the Quran’s justification for slaughter
on the simple basis that Muslims were denied access to the Meccan pilgrimage).
Renowned
scholar Bernard Lewis points out that the Crusades, though "often compared
with the Muslim jihad, was a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in
part also an imitation.... Forgiveness for sins to those who fought in
defense of the holy Church of God and the Christian religion and polity, and
eternal life for those fighting the infidel: these ideas... clearly reflect the
Muslim notion of jihad."
Lewis goes
on to state that, "unlike the jihad, it [the Crusade] was concerned primarily
with the defense or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory... The
Muslim jihad, in contrast, was perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation
that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or
submitted to Muslim rule... The object of jihad is to bring the whole world
under Islamic law."
If
someone takes your wallet and you take it back, who is the real thief?
The
Crusaders only invaded lands that had been Christian.
They did not attack
Saudi Arabia (other than a half-hearted expedition by a
minor figure) or sack Mecca, as the Muslims had done (and continued
doing) to
Rome and Constantinople. Their primary goal was the
recapture of
Jerusalem and the security of safe passage for
pilgrims. The toppling of
the Muslim empire was not on the agenda.
The period
of Crusader “occupation” (of its own former land) was stretched tenuously over
about 170 years, which is less than the Muslim occupation of Sicily and southern
Italy alone - to say nothing of Spain, Bulgaria and other lands that had never been
Islamic before falling victim to Jihad. In fact, the Arab occupation of
North Africa and Middle Eastern lands outside of Arabia is almost 1400 years
old.
Despite popular
depiction, the Crusades were not a titanic battle between Christianity
and Islam. Although originally dispatched by papal decree, the "occupiers"
quickly became part of the political and economic fabric of the Middle East
without much regard for religious differences. Their arrival was largely
accepted by the local population as simply another change in authority.
Islamic radicals even lamented the fact that many of their co-religionists
preferred to live under Frankish (Christian) rule than migrate to Muslim lands.
The Muslim world
was also split into warring factions, many of which allied themselves with the
Frankish princes against each other at one time or another. This even
included Saladin, the Kurdish warrior who is credited with eventually ousting
the "Crusaders." Contrary to recent propaganda, however, Saladin had
little interest in holy war until a rogue Frankish prince began disrupting his
trade routes. Both before and after the taking of Jerusalem, his armies
spent far more time and resources battling fellow Muslims.
For its part,
the Byzantine (Eastern Christian) Empire preferred to have little to do with the
Crusader kingdoms and went so far as to sign treaties with their Muslim rivals
on occasion.
Another
misconception is that the Crusader era was a time of constant war. In
fact, very little of this overall period included significant hostilities. In
response to Muslim expansion or aggression, there were only about
20 years of actual military
campaigning, much of which was spent on organization and travel. (They were
from 1098-1099, 1146-1148, 1188-1192, 1201-1204, 1218-1221, 1228-1229, and
1248-1250). By comparison, the Muslim Jihad against the island of Sicily
alone lasted 75 grinding years.
Ironically, the Crusades can be justified from the Quran itself, which encourages
Holy War in order to
"drive them out of the places from whence they drove you out"
(2:191). However, in this case the objective wasn't to expel Muslims
from the Middle East, but to bring
an end to the molestation of pilgrims. Holy war is not
justified by New Testament
teachings, which is why the Crusades are an anomaly, the
brief interruption of centuries of relentless Jihad against
Christianity that began long before and continued
well after that event.
The
greatest crime of the Crusaders was the sacking of Jerusalem, in which at least 3,000
people were said to have been massacred. This number is dwarfed by the
number of Jihad victims, from India to Constantinople, Africa and Narbonne, but followers of Islam
have never apologized for their crimes and never will.
What is
called 'sin and excess' by other religions, is what Islam refers to as
duty willed by Allah.
