War Quotes - Page 329

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It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely.

We come to the New Testament, where again a host of imperative verbs is mustered in support of that miserable bondage of free-choice, and the aid of carnal Reason with her inferences and similes is called in, just as in a picture or a dream you might see the King of the flies with his lances of straw and shields of hay arrayed against a real and regular army of seasoned human troops. That is how the human dreams of Diatribe go to war with the battalions of divine words.

I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience... War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does not come out of some instinctive human need. It is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort--by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion--to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war.

With lines that show an unyielding dedication to craft, these poems are not afraid of meaning or the meaningful. More and more every day, the thinking American asks how she is to believe in love when there is war all about her, and in each of her deeply felt lyrics, Elyse Fenton confronts this question with the kind of tenderness one lover reserves for another. If every poem is indeed a love poem,Clamor is indeed a debut worth reading and about which we must make noise.

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

War is a culture, bellicosity is addictive, defeat for a community that imagines itself to be history's eternal victim can be as intoxicating as victory. How long will it take for the Serbs to realize that the Milosevic years have been an unmitigated disaster for Serbia, the net result of Milosevic's policies being the economic and cultural ruin of the entire region, including Serbia, for several generations? Alas, one thing we can be sure of, that will not happen soon.

There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Senator John Kerry, who is running for president, said that when he voted for the war in Iraq, he didn't expect President Bush to 'f--- it up as badly as he did.' Here's some breaking news, tomorrow former Vice President Al Gore expected to endorse Howard Dean as the Democratic nominee for president of the United States - and you thought John Kerry was using four letter words before! Actually, to John Kerry, Dean is a four letter word.

And when you say the policies are what caused this war - American policies - that's not to say that they're wrong. It's not to say that the policies were made by madmen or evil people. It's simply to say that you better understand the motivation of your enemy if you're going to defeat him. And the man who is motivated by a belief that his religion is being attacked by a superpower is much more dangerous than a man who's mad at you because you have women in the workplace.

The coarsening of our culture towards violent death has more consequences than war. Tragically, this same culture has led to the death of 50 million unborn children in the last 40 years. I don't think a civilization can long endure that does not have respect for all human life, born and not yet born. I believe there will come a time when we are all judged on whether or not we took a stand in defense of all life from the moment of conception until our last natural breath.

While many people like the idea of exercising unconditional love, most eventually find it too draining and impossible to sustain, often because the attempt to practice it is misunderstood, discouraged, brought under attack, or made a target of willful abuse. As sad as it may be to admit, in our modern world people are far more accustomed to hearing news of war, genocide, murder, disasters, famine, and disease than they are to hearing anything about acts of love or grace.

Granana doesn't understand what the big deal is. She didn't cry at Olivia's funeral, and I doubt she even remembers Olivia's name. Granana lost, like, ninety-two million kids in childbirth. All of her brothers died in the war. She survived the Depression by stealing radish bulbs from her neighbors' garden, and fishing the elms for pigeons. Dad likes to remind us of this in a grave voice, as if it explained her jaundiced pitilessness: "Boys. Your grandmother ate pigeons."

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.

Insurrection: Insurrection as soon as circumstances allow: insurrection, strenuous, ubiquitous: the insurrection of the masses: the holy war of the oppressed: the republic to make republicans: the people in action to initiate progress. Let the insurrection announce with its awful voice the decrees of God: let it clear and level the ground on which its own immortal structure shall be raised. Let it, like the Nile, flood all the country that it is destined to make fertile.

I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself. When Anne Sexton admonished me, "We are all writing God's poem," I took it to mean there should be no competition between writers because we are all involved in a common project, a common prayer. But to Gore's and Norman's generation, particularly those male writers who served in the second world war, the prizefighter paradigm remains.

We all have demons inside us, Nick. The Tsalagi have an old saying—every heart holds two wolves. One is the white wolf, who is made up of love, kindness, respect, decency, compassion, and all the things that are good in life. The black wolf is born of jealousy, hatred, pettiness, prejudice, vindictiveness, and all the poisons of the human personality. The two constantly war with each other for dominance. And one day, one wolf will overtake and devour the other.” - Acheron

From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night, The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fixed sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch. Fire answers fire, and through their play flames Each battle sees the other's umbered face. Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents The armorers accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation.

Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputation bleaching behind them in the sun in this country.

People say to us, look, it may well be the case that there are fewer wars and fewer genocides, but surely more people are being killed. But when we look at this, the number of people killed in wars involving a state every year, all the wars, and you can see there's a high point, that's the Korean war, and it keeps on going down and down and down. If you look at the average number of people killed per conflict per year, it goes from 37-thousand in 1950 to just 600 in 2002.

Alternatively, suppose Qaddafi winds up hanging from a lamppost in his favorite party dress. If you're a Third World dictator, what lessons would you draw? Qaddafi was the thug who came in from the cold, the one who (in the wake of Saddam's fall) renounced his nuclear program and was supposedly rehabilitated in the chancelleries of the West. He was a strong partner in the war on terrorism, according to U.S. diplomats. And what did Washington do? They overthrew him anyway.

I think certain periods of history don't get dealt with because I think historians, and it's their job, but they look back and look for patterns. They look for sequences and they look for reasons, and certain periods of history don't fit with the general pattern of 1500 to the 20th century, during which there's the creation of the United States. At this time of 1814, two nations who would eventually become close allies were at war with each other, so it doesn't quite fit.

I wrote and directed and acted in it and produced it, every job I have since that - and Star Wars included - I look at it completely different now. Now that I've seen how it gets made, I can appreciate the jobs that people are doing, and it's also become a different learning experience for me to work on things because I'm watching pros at the top of their field do their jobs and just picking up on their tricks and all of their expertise and stashing them away in my brain.

Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poeticyouth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.

We couldn't keep ten million refugees on our soil; we couldn't tolerate such an unstable situation for who knows how long. That influx of refugees wouldn't have stopped - on the contrary. It would have gone on and on and on, until there would have been an explosion. We were no longer able to control the arrival of those people, in our own interest we had to stop it! That's what I said to Mr.[Richard] Nixon, to all the other leaders I visited in an attempt to avert the war.

The history of woman is the history of the continued and universal oppression of one sex by the other. The emancipation of woman is her restoration to equal rights and privileges with man.... Need we wonder, then, at the sad spectacle which humanity offers us? Its hideous wars, its social abominations, its foul creeds, its treacheries, vices, wants, diseases, lusts, tyrannies, and crimes are the natural outcome of the subjugation of one half of the human race by the other.

I always want to make films. I think of it as a great opportunity to comment on the world in which we live. Perhaps just because I just came off "The Hurt Locker" (2008) and I'm thinking of the war and I think it's a deplorable situation. It's a great medium in which to speak about that. This is a war that cannot be won, why are we sending troops over there? Well, the only medium I have, the only opportunity I have, is to use film. There will always be issues I care about.

Unfortunately, as inspiring as people find Barack Obama, change can be interpreted in so many different ways. I think he might do a great deal of good things for social programs here in America and as well, as much as people want to characterize anybody who's a leader and try and sell that, and market it and characterize them in a good way or a bad way, I think it's very telling about the system that we have when we come to the realization that the war is not going to end.

You made these things up yourselves and now scare yourselves with them and even use them to plan your prospective policies. These policies have no prospects. The only possible future is in cooperation in all areas, including security issues. What is the major security problem today? Terrorism. There are bombings in Europe, in Paris, in Russia, in Belgium. There is a war in the Middle East. This is the main concern. But no, let us keep speculating on the threat from Russia.

You are born supernaturally through faith, by the grace of God, into the kingdom of righteousness; but you are born a little babe, that is all; and if you make any progress from that point on, it must be by work, by sacrifice, by the practice of Christian virtues, by benevolence, by self-denial, by resisting the adversary, by making valiant war for God and against sin; and on no other basis, am I authorized in giving you a hope that you may come to manhood in Christ Jesus.

In order to bring a nation to support the burdens incident to maintaining great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of an external menace or of internal conditions rendered intolerable by the unjust restraints of foreign nations. This involves the development to a high degree of the nation-hero nation-villain ideology and the arousing of the population to a sense of the duty of sacrifice.

Until educators, individuals, artists, intellectuals and various social movements address how the metaphysics of casino capitalism, war and violence have taken hold on American society (and in other parts of the world) along with the savage social costs they have enacted, the forms of social, political, and economic violence that young people are protesting against, as well as the violence waged in response to their protests, will become impossible to recognize and act on.

As a soldier, I've served with the most brave people in an institution that's built on integrity, honor, and duty. This is why I'm working very hard to support Senator Bernie Sanders - not only to get through the Democratic primary, but also to win the presidency. He is the only candidate on both sides who understands the cost of war, who has that foresight to keep our country safe, and who will make sure that our military power is not being when and where it shouldn't be.

I never expected Star Wars to all of a sudden become like The Matrix and change perspective on things. I respected it trying to stay close to the style of what George Lucas was originally doing. I don't understand how people can hate them. I think even the most cynical person can find something that reminds them of the Star Wars they loved. They're not void of that. Maybe there are holes, but it's like your family: You accept people's shortcomings, and you still love them.

The Iraq war is a huge subject and there have been many films about it. But it was when the private contractors started taking over and taking responsibilities from the regular army, which hides the war. You have these private armies of mercenaries acting with immunity for their actions, the worst of which was the Blackwater case where they killed 17 Iraqi civilians and the guys who did it just went home. We [screenwriter Paul Laverty and Loach] felt this deserved a story.

In Burton's day they [soldiers] were itching to get into the fray. Now it is the opposite. They are always whining about the dangers of being killed. Oh my God, they are such wimps now! The whole point of being in the Army is wanting to get killed, wanting to test yourself to the limits. Now you have to fly 15,000ft above the war zone to avoid getting hit. I don't think there is any point in having wars if that's how you're going to behave. It's pathetic. All this whining!

If Donald Trump dismantles the agreement [the "Iran nuclear deal"] won by President Barack Obama with President Hassan Rouhani and the Iranian government and people: If he dismantles that, and puts greater sanctions on Iran, then we are leading to another war; another war inspired by Israel, another war that will bring China into war, Russia into war, Europe into war. And the Western world, in this war, will be taken completely down, and a whole new world is on the horizon.

There is a clear and strong link between the economy's present woes and the Iraq war. The war was at least one of the factors contributing to rising oil prices - which meant Americans were spending money on imported oil, rather than on things that would stimulate the american economy. Hiring Nepalese contractors in Iraq, moreover, doesn't stimulate the American economy in the way that building a school in America would do - and obviously doesn't have the long term benefits.

My wife made me watch this documentary about the Iraq War, and there was a really powerful moment where they followed some civilian whose family had been killed. This was 5 or 10 minutes of this woman talking, and it was extremely arresting. You realize how you never hear from the person on the receiving end of a war without a reporter stepping in to compartmentalize the story. Usually they're just a few shots at the end of a news report, wailing and screaming at a funeral.

We build character in order for us to withstand the rigors of combat and resist the temptations to compromise our principles in peacetime. We must build character in peacetime because there is no time in war. Character is the most important quality you can find in any person, but especially in a soldier. It is the foundation that will get anybody through anything he may encounter. Reputation is what people think you are; character is what you are- that is the staying power.

Consider the Koran... this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.

The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648, was a series of conflicts that became the last great struggle of religious wars in Europe. It was fought almost exclusively on German soil...but before the war ended, it involved most of the nations of Europe. The underlying cause of the war was the deep-seated hostility between the German Protestants and German Catholics - with the Jesuits and Cardinal Richelieu, who was the real ruler of France, fanning the fires to accomplish their ends.

What the U.S. does is it continues to print money when the economic situation gets difficult. This is what happened in the last depression during the summer of 2008 when they tried to resolve the economic crisis by printing valueless money. This is the business privilege given to them at the famous conference of Bretton Woods in 1944 when the United States emerged as the superpower after Europe and the rest of the world, mainly Europe, that had collapsed because of the war.

When the Jews were being persecuted by the Nazis in 1944 we passed the War Refugee Act, which focused on rescuing Jews, a religious group. But if the religious group is the subject of the persecution based on their religion, it's perfectly OK for a First Amendment-bound society to emphasize their rescue, just as it is perfectly OK to emphasize the fact that many, if not all of the perpetrators of Islamic terrorism, come from countries with a history of supporting terrorism.

...fiction is made out of the writer's experience, his whole life from infancy on, everything he's thought and done and seen and read and dreamed. But experience isn't something you go and get - it's a gift, and the only prerequisite for receiving it is that you be open to it. A closed soul can have the most immense adventures, go through a civil war or a trip to the moon, and have nothing to show for all that "experience"; whereas the open soul can do wonders with nothing.

I'll tell you how you know when you're on something good: when everybody starts to tear up when they're leaving, when they're wrapping for the season. You know, when you say, "All right, we're done with McGillicuddy. That's a wrap for McGillicuddy!" And everybody applauds, but everybody's sad, because McGillicuddy's going to be gone! You know, it's like family going off to college or war. You have this intimate relationship with these people, and then - bam! - they're gone.

Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.

Churchill is the very type of a corrupt journalist. There is not a worse prostitute in politics. He himself has written that it'sunimaginable what can be done in war with the help of lies. He's an utterly amoral repulsive creature. I'm convinced that he has his place of refuge ready beyond the Atlantic. He obviously won't seek sanctuary in Canada. In Canada he'd be beaten up. He'll go to his friends the Yankees. As soon as this damnable winter is over, we'll remedy all that.

Unlike previous wars, our enemy now is a stateless network of religious extremists. They do not obey the laws of war, they hide among peaceful populations and launch surprise attacks on civilians. They have no armed forces per se, no territory or citizens to defend and no fear of dying during their attacks. Information is our primary weapon against this enemy, and intelligence gathered from captured operatives is perhaps the most effective means of preventing future attacks.

What we accomplished during World War Two is just amazing. We turned our country upside down. African Americans were demanding to be given combat missions. 10% of Americans moved in order to relocate for a war job. We as a country accomplished this heroic, nearly miraculous thing, and we have this legacy of policies and agency - how did they do it? How did they fund it? How did they organize it? It is actually an example that we can borrow from very productively to guide us.

What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.

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