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 attacks on the
U.S. embassy yesterday in Cairo and the storming of the American
consulate in Libya, where the U.S. ambassador was murdered along with
three staff members — and the initial official American reaction to the
mayhem — are all reprehensible, each in their own way. Let us sort out
this terrible chain of events.
Timing: The assaults came exactly on the eleventh
anniversary of bin Laden’s and al-Qaeda’s attack on America. If there
was any doubt about the intent of the timing, the appearance of black
al-Qaedist flags among the mobs removed it. The chanting of Osama bin
Laden’s name made it doubly clear who were the heroes of the Egyptian
mob. Why should we be surprised by the lackluster response of the
Egyptian and Libyan “authorities” to protect diplomatic sanctuaries,
given the nature of the “governments” in both countries? One of the
Egyptian demonstration’s organizers was Mohamed al-Zawahiri, the brother
of the top deputy to Osama bin Laden, and a planner of the 9/11
attacks, which were led by Mohamed Atta, an Egyptian citizen. In Libya,
the sick violence is reminding the world that the problem in the Middle
East is not dictators propped up by the U.S. — Qaddafi was an archenemy
of the U.S. — but the proverbial Arab Street that can blame everything
and everyone, from a cartoon to a video, for the wages of its own
self-induced pathologies. So far, all the Arab Spring is accomplishing
is removing the dictatorial props and authoritarian excuses for grass
roots Middle East madness.
Ingratitude: Egypt is currently a beneficiary of
more than $1 billion in annual American aid, and its new Muslim
Brotherhood–led government is negotiating to have much of its sizable
U.S. debt forgiven. Libya, remember, was the recipient of the Obama
administration’s “lead from behind” intervention that led to the removal
of Moammar Qaddafi — and apparently gave the present demonstrators the
freedom to kill Americans. This is all called “smart” diplomacy.
Appeasement: Here are a few sentences from the
statement issued by the Cairo embassy before it was attacked: “The
Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by
misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we
condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. . . .We firmly
reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech
to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
The Problem? The embassy was condemning not those zealots who then stormed their own grounds, but some eccentric private citizens back home who made a movie. One would have thought that the Obama administration had learned
something from the Rushdie fatwa and prophet cartoon incidents. This
initial official American diplomatic reaction — to condemn the supposed
excess of free speech in the United States, as if the government is
responsible for the constitutionally-protected expression of a few
private American citizens, while the Egyptian government is not
responsible for a mass demonstration and violence against an embassy of
the United States — is not just shameful, but absurd.
The author of this
American diplomatic statement should be fired immediately — as well as
any diplomatic personnel who approved it. Obviously our official
representatives overseas do not understand, or have not read, the U.S.
Constitution. And if the administration claims the embassy that issued
the appeasing statement did so without authority, then we have a larger
problem with freelancing diplomats who across the globe weigh in with
statements that supposedly do not reflect official policy. Note,
however, that the initial diplomatic communiqué is the logical extension
of this administration’s rhetoric (see below).
Shame: As gratitude for our overthrowing a cruel
despot in Libya, Libyan extremists have murdered the American ambassador
and his staffers. The Libyan government, such as it is there, either
cannot or will not protect U.S. diplomatic personnel. And the world
wonders why last year the U.S. bombed one group of Libyan cutthroats
only to aid another.
The attacks in Egypt come a little over three years after the
embarrassing Obama Cairo speech, in which the president created an
entire mythology about the history of Islam, in vain hopes of appeasing
his Egyptian hosts. The violence also follows ongoing comical efforts of
the administration to assure us that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is
not an extremist Islamic organization bent on turning Egypt into a
theocratic state. And the attacks are simultaneous with President
Obama’s ongoing and crude efforts to embarrass Israeli Prime Minister
Netanyahu.
The future. Expect more violence. The Libyan
murderers are now empowered, and, like the infamous Iranian
hostage-takers, feel their government either supports them or can’t stop
them. The crowd in Egypt knew what it was doing when it chanted Obama’s
name juxtaposed to Osama’s. Obama’s effort to appease Islam is an utter failure, as we see in
various polls that show no change in anti-American attitudes in the
Middle East — despite the president’s initial al Arabiya interview (“We
sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.”); the rantings of
National Intelligence Director James Clapper (e.g., “The term ‘Muslim
Brotherhood’ . . . is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in
the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which
has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of
Islam.”); and the absurdities of our NASA director (“When I became the
NASA administrator . . . perhaps foremost, he [President Obama] wanted
me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more
with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their
historic contribution to science.”) — to cite only a few examples from
many.
At some point, someone in the administration is going to fathom that
the more one seeks to appease radical Islam, the more the latter
despises the appeaser. These terrible attacks on the anniversary of 9/11 are extremely
significant. They come right at a time when we are considering an
aggregate $1 trillion cutback in defense over the next decade. They
should give make us cautious about proposed intervention in Syria. They
leave our Arab Spring policy in tatters, and the whole “reset” approach
to the Middle East incoherent.
They embarrass any who continue to
contextualize radical Islamic violence. The juxtaposed chants of “Osama”
and “Obama” in Egypt make a mockery of the recent “We killed Osama”
spiking the football at the Democratic convention. And they remind us
why 2012 is sadly looking a lot like 1980 — when in a similar election
year, in a similarly minded administration, the proverbial chickens of
four years of “smart” diplomacy tragically came home to roost. National Review
