A soldier is not a man of God nor even a human being, Rather he is an instrument of war............. a gear, Nothing more than a very small cog in a very large killing machine, An insignificant fleck in the overall fabric of death, A negligible notch on the handle of an enemy’s gun, A mere afterthought for those who would pose war, An unkempt grunt, A lonely gutted, blood-spattered corpse lying on the ground, Something like the crush of a dead dog on a lonely country road, Unless, of course, that soldier just happened to be, My son, your dad, your brother, or our best friend, Someone whose name might well have been Abdul, Mohammed, Usama, Ishmael, Hassan, Yuusuf, Ibrahim, Jabbar, Mukhtar, Or perhaps even Mike, John, or Bill!