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."
Opposing Blasphemy Laws - The case of a young Pakistani girl by Nina Shea
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Today’s New York Times and Washington Post
shed rare light on the latest gross injustices that result from
Pakistan’s blasphemy law. They report on yesterday’s arrest of Rimsha
Masih, an 11- or 12-year-old Christian girl, who, according to some accounts,
suffers from Down’s syndrome. Rimsha has been jailed for allegedly
burning pages of the Koran while sweeping a facility in her slum
neighborhood near the capital of Islamabad.
Should the case go to trial, the girl now faces a virtually certain
sentence of life imprisonment, since under the sharia court, her
testimony is worth a quarter of a Muslim male’s and there is only oral
evidence in this case. Should she be released back to her community, she
will face the wrath of the mob, incited by mosque leaders who are
quoted by the Post as condemning her to death by burning.
Meanwhile, her mother has been incarcerated with her, and hundreds of
her co-religionists have fled their homes, terrorized by vigilantes.
Christians, Ahmadiyyas, Shiites, and Hindu have been
disproportionately targeted under Pakistan’s blasphemy law. But moderate
and reformist Muslims from the country’s Sunni majority have also been
victimized by this very bad law. As the Post states: “Under Pakistani law, those found guilty of defaming the Islamic
prophet Muhammad face the death penalty, while defiling the Koran can
bring a life sentence. The case of the girl is the fourth in recent months
to alarm human rights advocates, who say the law is frequently used to
persecute Christians and also has been unfairly applied to the mentally
ill — including some Muslims.”
A notable feature of the law is that it engenders more killings from
extra-judicial violence than from court-ordered death sentences. In July
in Punjab province, a mob whipped into a frenzy by radical leaders
hunted down a man thought to have blasphemed against Islam, beat him to
death, and burned his body burned outside a police station. In other
cases, defendants awaiting trial, or even those who have been released
or acquitted, along with the acquitting judge, have been murdered or
threatened with murder. Last year, Pakistani minister of minority
affairs Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab governor Salman Taseer who dared to
criticize the law were themselves accused of “blasphemy” and gunned down
by Islamist extremists. In Taseer’s case, the murderer was heralded as a
hero by the bar association; though eventually convicted of his crime;
the presiding judge, however, was forced to go into hiding by vigilante
death threats. No one has been convicted in the murder of Minister
Bhatti, a Christian.
The Times reports that some officials involved with Rimsha’s
case have commented that the charges are “baseless” and that she and her
mother will be let go. But the mobs, even now swarming the jail where
Rimsha is held, will seek bloody retribution against any official who
allows this to happen. If Asia Bibi (Christian mother of five imprisoned
since 2009) and other past cases offer any precedent, Rimsha is likely
to languish in prison for a long time.
When asked about the case at yesterday’s press briefing, U.S. State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland spoke
in terms of “misuse of the blasphemy law.” It is time for U.S.
diplomats to recognize that this is not a problem of “misuse.” No reform
or legal tweaking can perfect this law. It is an irredeemably unjust
statute that is routinely used to persecute minorities, crush reformers,
and in the process subvert the rule of law and individual freedoms. The
Times accurately concludes about Pakistan that “it is the
emotionally charged blasphemy issue that has most polarized society.”
Rather than quelling sectarian violence, it enflames it, and gives
Islamic extremists a platform within society to further manipulate and
radicalize it.
The United States government needs to understand the dynamic of the
blasphemy law and get its response right. This threat is spreading:
Blasphemy charges are surfacing in Egypt and Tunisia along with the rise
of Islamist rule, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
persistently presses for such laws within the United Nations.
