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."
Jordan is hosting 560,000 Syrian refugees, their camps marked by disorder and violence. By Clifford D. May
Thursday, June 20, 2013
This problem was definitely NOT created by ISRAEL, but by the Camel Jockeys themselves, This is a time of celebration!-edit. Zaatari, Jordan — The Zaatari refugee camp sprawls across
the featureless, colorless desert of northern Jordan, six miles from the
border with Syria, a country torn limb from limb by civil war. Among
the camp’s 120,000 residents,
the conventional wisdom has long been the same as in Washington, D.C.:
Surely, the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is inevitable and
imminent; and once that happens, the displaced can go home. But on June
5, Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon defeated Syrian rebel forces in the
strategic city of Qusayr. “Now, the refugees are saying, ‘The
rebellion is not succeeding, we can’t return, we will have to stay.’
Psychologically and practically, this is a significant change.” Telling
me this is Kilian Kleinschmidt, a burly 50-year-old Berliner employed by
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. For the past three
months, he has been the camp’s senior field coordinator — the “mayor,”
he half-jokes. We are sitting in Kleinschmidt’s office, a white, metal,
pre-fab “caravan.” He is an old pro who has run refugee camps in tough
corners of the world before: Kenya, Pakistan, the Congo, and Somalia
among them. “It
was better even in Mogadishu,” he says. “There, at least, I knew who
were my friends and who were my enemies. Here, it’s a 10,000-piece
puzzle. This is an unhappy place. And it’s a very dangerous place. There
are some bad people here, and they are holding everyone else hostage.” Among
those bad people: thieves, vandals, counterfeiters, rapists, drug
traffickers, smugglers, youth gangs, “mafias,” and “revolutionaries.” As
to the last category, Kleinschmidt says: “I’m not yet equipped to map
out their ideologies.” But he has seen the flags of both the Free Syrian
Army and Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Most of those
living here have lost family members and property. Despite such traumas,
or perhaps because of them, they are quick to express grievances, and
their protests frequently spiral into riots. “We have a lot of violence
both among the refugees and with the staff,” Kleinschmidt says
matter-of-factly. “We had six staff injured just last week. I still have
a sore throat from the tear gas.”
Jordanian policemen have been
assigned to maintain order in Zaatari. Success has eluded them. “About
six weeks ago, two policemen were killed and twelve injured,”
Kleinschmidt notes. “One was dragged from his car and hit with rocks.” Theft
is a chronic problem: of food, supplies, electricity (spiderwebs of
wires parasite power lines in some of the camp’s “neighborhoods”), and
even caravans. “They take steel fence posts and put wheels on them, and
then move the caravans,” Kleinschmidt says. “We actually had a police
station stolen — eight caravans. They simply disappeared when one team
of police had left and another had not yet arrived. Nowhere else have I
seen such things.” Jordan is now hosting an estimated 560,000
Syrian refugees. Those in the refugee camps drain scarce resources,
water and energy in particular. Those who have slipped into Jordan’s
cities compete for jobs and housing, and may engage in crime or pose
security risks. Jordan’s total population is only about 6.4
million; if Zaatari were a city it would be the country’s fifth-largest.
In fact, it is increasingly taking on urban characteristics. There are
now streets lined with stalls offering everything from rotisserie
chicken to ice cream to clothes to home appliances. Kleinschmidt tells
me one can also find brothels and gambling dens.
Yet Kleinschmidt
does not seem overwhelmed. On the contrary, he is remarkably cheerful,
and justifiably proud of the job he’s doing: establishing an oasis in
the desert — a troubled oasis, to be sure, but one in which lives are
being saved. If the refugees can’t return to Syria anytime soon,
Kleinschmidt will do what he can to improve their lives here. For one,
he wants them all to live in caravans — which have windows, floors, and
doors that lock — rather than tents. For another, he wants to license
what is now unregulated commerce and prevent criminal gangs from
“taxing” the merchants. He wants to give residents some responsibility
for governing themselves and securing their “neighborhoods.” More of
them also need to work, he says, and to use the money they earn to pay
for the services they receive, so they don’t become dependent and idle, a
combination that, he understands, breeds trouble.
None of this
comes cheap, and the wealthy Arab oil-exporting states of the region are
not digging deeply into their pockets. Nor are Americans and Europeans
feeling enthusiastically philanthropic these days. The U.N. has issued a
$5 billion emergency appeal, the largest in its history. It’s
anyone’s guess when the fighting in Syria will end. President Obama has
now promised to send arms to the rebels. No one is confident such
assistance will be sufficient to alter the trajectory of the conflict.
And if Assad — with robust Iranian, Hezbollah, and Russian support —
should emerge victorious, he may not welcome the refugees back with open
arms. Jordan is not the only neighbor of Syria hosting refugees: There
are at least a million more in Lebanon and Turkey. The river is still
rising. It’s likely that the situation will get worse before it gets
better; it’s not unlikely that it will get worse before it gets worse. National Review –Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security.
