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."
Al Jazeera Bemoans Iran’s Attacks on Gulf Arab States By Hugh Fitzgerald
Wednesday, April 08, 2026
Downtown Dubai – Dubai – United Arab Emirates by Xiaotong Gao, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
Robert Spencer : Iran’s ill-considered policy of hitting Gulf Arab states was, in
Tehran’s calculation, going to make those states pressure the Americans
to stop the war. That hasn’t happened. Instead, the Gulf Arabs now want
America not to end the war prematurely, but “to finish the job” so that
Iran can never again threaten its neighbors. More on how Iran has turned
itself into the common enemy of America, Israel, and the Gulf Arab
states, can be found here: “Iran’s strikes on the Gulf: Burning the
bridges of good neighbourliness,” by Sultan Al-Khulaifi, Al Jazeera, March 7, 2026:
When the United States and Israel launched their
coordinated assault on Iran in the early hours of February 28, 2026, an
operation Washington has named “Operation Epic Fury”, the Gulf states
did not cheer. They watched with dread.
That is not quite true. We know that behind the scenes, the Saudi
crown prince had for months been urging President Trump to attack Iran.
He must have watched not with dread as American and Israel launched
their initial attack, but with quiet satisfaction.
For years, they had invested enormous diplomatic capital
in preventing precisely this moment. They had engaged Tehran, maintained
embassies, and offered repeated assurances that their territories would
not serve as launchpads against the Islamic Republic.
That Iran’s response has been to turn its missiles on these same
neighbours is not only a strategic miscalculation of historic
proportions, but is also a profound moral and legal failure that risks
poisoning relations for generations to come.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states did not arrive at this
crisis as Iran’s enemies. They arrived as reluctant bystanders, having
spent years threading a needle between Washington and Tehran with
deliberate, often thankless, care….
I disagree with the writer, Sultan Al-Khulaifi. For years the Gulf
Arabs have been alarmed as they watched Iran create a “Shi’a crescent”
extending from Iran to include Shia militias in Iraq, Shia Houthis in
Yemen, Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon, and even Hamas, though its membership
was Sunni, was provided aid by Iran, that treated Hamas as an “honorary
Shia” member because it was hellbent, like Iran, on destroying the
Jewish state.
Every missile fired at Dubai or Doha or Riyadh shifts the
narrative, pulls the Gulf states deeper into a conflict they sought to
avoid, and weakens the very actors most capable of mediating a way out.
This is a strategic miscalculation of the first order. The interest of
the wider region lies in preventing Israel from emerging as the
unchallenged hegemon of the Middle East, a scenario that becomes more
likely, not less, the more Iran pushes its Arab neighbours out of their
potential role as honest brokers and into the arms of a deeper security
alignment with Washington. Iran, in targeting the Gulf, is not resisting
the new regional order; it is inadvertently constructing it.
What Sultan Al-Khulaifi chooses not to say is that these Gulf Arab
states are not just moving closer to Washington, but also closer to
Jerusalem. The UAE and Bahrain were already linked to Israel in the
Abrahamic Accords, and their support for the Jewish state has only
deepened as it becomes obvious that Israel is the single most effective
military power, even more than the United States, against Iran.
Saudi
Arabia, which for months before the war broke out had behind the scenes
been urging Trump to attack Iran, has clearly been appreciative of the
IDF’s destruction of so many ballistic missiles and drones that Iran
will no longer be able to launch on Saudi oil production facilities. The
UAE too, having endured more Iranian ballistic missile attacks even
than Israel, is grateful to the Jewish state for doing such damage to
Iran’s store of ballistic missiles, its ballistic missile plants, and
its missile launchers.
Among the Gulf Arab states, Qatar was the closest
to Iran, which is why the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members —
especially the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain — blockaded Qatar between
2017 and 2022, accusing it of supporting Iran-backed groups and
fostering closer ties with Iran, which they viewed as a threat to
regional security.
Even if the war with Iran were to be halted tomorrow, and no more
missiles or drones were launched by Tehran at the Gulf Arab states, it
would take many years for the bad blood between the Gulf Arabs and Iran
to subside. Iran — the Shi’a and non-Arab outlier in a Sunni Arab sea —
will be shunned by its neighbors unless it agrees to pay for all the
damage it has inflicted on the Gulf Arab states, which as of now exceeds
$100 billion. I don’t think Iran will ever agree to that.
