Quotes about iraq

Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease.

For the good that I would: I do not, but the evil which I would not, I do.

To fuel yet another war this time against Iraq by cynically manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TVspecials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain itof meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillagingof even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a State to do to itspeople.

The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking

In the time that we're here today, more women and children will die violently in the Darfur region than in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel or Lebanon. So, after September 30, you won't need the UN - you will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones.

McChrystal had organized a jaw-dropping counterterrorism campaign inside Iraq, but the tactical successes did not translate into a strategic victory. This was why counterinsurgency - blanketing the population in safety and winning them over - was necessary.

As he grew older, which was mostly in my absence, my firstborn son, Alexander, became ever more humorous and courageous. There came a time, as the confrontation with the enemies of our civilization became more acute, when he sent off various applications to enlist in the armed forces. I didn't want to be involved in this decision either way, especially since I was being regularly taunted for not having 'sent' any of my children to fight in the wars of resistance that I supported. (As if I could

In movies, war only looks romantic. “Tell my gal I love her…” close-up shot, and fade out. It doesn’t work as beautifully and neat in real life. Flying chunks of human flesh and screaming orphans really put that Hollywood take into perspective and there is nothing clean or sterile about any of it. When people die, it’s fucking horrible.

Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? That‘s why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if— as the war ends, or at least starts to end— if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isn‘t why were told that we were going there— Aren‘t we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, aren‘t we letting the people who foisted the WM

Nothing—not even the US Army—more threatens the future of a democratic, pluralistic and (dare we wish, secular) Iraq than the political ascendancy of Islamic fascists like Al Sadr.

The debacle in Iraq has reinforced the realist dictum, disparaged by idealists in the 1990s, that the legacies of geography, history and culture really do set limits on what can be accomplished in any given place. But the experience in the Balkans reinforced an idealist dictum that is equally true: One should always work near the limits of what is possible rather than cynically give up on any place. In this decade idealists went too far; in the previous one, it was realists who did not go far en

As a Nobel Peace laureate, I, like most people, agonize over the use of force. But when it comes to rescuing an innocent people from tyranny or genocide, I've never questioned the justification for resorting to force. That's why I supported Vietnam's 1978 invasion of Cambodia, which ended Pol Pot's regime, and Tanzania's invasion of Uganda in 1979, to oust Idi Amin. In both cases, those countries acted without U.N. or international approval—and in both cases they were right to do so.

I think you can be an enemy of Saddam Hussein even if Donald Rumsfeld is also an enemy of Saddam Hussein.

Saddam's politics was the politics of the thug, of violence from the outset of his reign. Realism suggests that some people are not going to be tractable in response to purely peaceable overtures. Indeed, it certainly appears that some individuals, including notably Saddam Hussein, will cheerfully help themselves to a yard for every inch offered by well-meaning peacemakers. When we are dealing with customers as tough as that, there is no alternative to being tough ourselves.

Aside from clinically-diagnosed psychopaths, I have not met one person in war who thoroughly enjoyed killing. If someone ended up bragging over a kill, it was safe to assume that their story was mere fabrication or that they were one bad day away from an inpatient psychiatric ward. No matter how much someone may appear to deserve to be killed, something dies within us when we kill. It's contradictory, the antithesis of our species survival instinct.

A woman in combat? Yes. Since when? Since Native American warrior Buffalo Calf Road Woman knocked that prick General George Custer off of his horse. Since Pantea Arteshbod propelled herself to become one of the greatest Persian commanders during the reign of Cyrus the Great. Since Hua Mulan disguised herself as a male to engage in combat and became one of China’s most respected heroines.

To stay alive, you have to keep moving. Running, relocating, driving, doing everything in your power to stay in motion and make it to safety.

A moving target is harder to kill, and I didn't stop running, maneuvering, until I reached home base, where I could breathe between death-defying sprints. I just need to make it home alive, and this will all be over, I told myself. Home.

This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has pro

Ensuring that our home planet is healthy and life sustaining is an overwhelming priority that undercuts all other human activities. The ship must first float. Our failure to grasp these fundamental tenants of existence will be our undoing. And one thing is for certain. No calvary is going to come charging to our rescue. We are going to have to rescue ourselves or die trying. Workable solutions are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness

Worry only about what you control. The rest is war.

I would listen with growing outrage as hypocritical and obtuse American senators made all these demands of Iraqi legislators and yet themselves could not even pass budgets or appropriations bills, not to mention deal with tough challenges like the budget deficit, Social Security, and entitlement reforms. So many times I wanted to come right out of my chair at the witness table and scream, You guys have been in business for over two hundred years and can't pass routine legislation. How can you be

The Chilcot report is a revelation of injustice under the cloak of Aid. The Chilcot report is a sorry report on the current state of humanity. So the ultimate question here is – what are we going to achieve out of the sorry reports when “sorry” has no meaning in action?

I've had people tell me to get over it. I politely tell them, 'How about if I chop off your finger and see if it grows back?

They might watch American movies, wear American clothes, even read American books but Bush and the Iraq War have made actual American people social lepers; she only has to open her mouth in some places to feel a wave of loathing directed at her. Katie is weary of pointing out that at least half her countrymen detest their President even more than Europe does, but it’s no good.

Oh, don't let him pull that 'Pearl Harbor I'm going off to war' stuff on you.

If feels good to live after death. It feels good to not be dead. It feels so good to find myself alive and flying home. The music plays in my ears and I float further and further away from war. Fucking Baghdad.

A life was a story, and a story was nothing more than a promise that something bad would happen. It was a promise that people would desire and want and ache and burn, but it was not a promise that they would find what they sought.

The cost of war is like an immeasurable tremor that knows no borders, its shockwaves reverberating across the world resulting in universal suffering.

It's something that this country hasn't had to deal with. But there's going to be a whole new generation that doesn't know their father. It's almost selfish of us to die. They train us as warriors. But they don't teach us how to take the pain away.

You know, sometimes I wish they would do this for us when we come home alive.

I knew that these people on their way to work or home or dinner had no idea what it was they were supporting. They did not have a clue as to what war was like. What it made people see, and what it made them do to each other. I felt as though I didn't deserve their support, or anyone's, for what I had done. No one should ever support the activities in which I had participated. No one should ever support the people who do such things. (...) They were uninformed but good people. The kind whose resp

It was at that point that I started probing them about what they wanted from America. Here's what they told me: "We want our kids to go out and play. We want them to go out and play and not feel like they're going to get hurt. I want my kid to not be on the computer all day long. I want him to go outside and play. I want him to not be on computer games. I want my kids to go to school. I want my wife to be happy. I want..." "That's what we cant back home," I said. "Why would it be so different?"

First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain.

Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR's thinking, "he is our bloody tyrant." In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervened in the name of some grand theory of international justice were doing so to protect their own selfish interests and to maintain Arab subordination to the west.

One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.

You’ll never let me go, will you? Giving me the space and freedom I want isn’t your idea of love, is it? You’d rather cut me deep on earth to spare me pain in hell, whereas I think hell is right here.

An hour later. the moon reflected its light on the Tigris as well. The sun, the moon, and Fatima. What else could I ask for?

You asked if I loved her? I can't even whisper her name, my heart would burst out of my chest.

Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,

I don’t recall ever seeing my mother as a human being. She would always be weeping and wailing in the corner of the kitchen like a dog tied up to be tormented. My father would assail her with a hail of insults, and when her endurance broke, she would whine aloud, ‘Why good Lord? Why? Take me and save me.’ Only then would my father stand up, take the cord out of his headdress, and whip her nonstop for half an hour, spitting at her throughout.

Maybe it's time to stop being a soldier and go home to be a father. And a husband for Deanna. I'm not sure how.

He took a deep breath in, still managing himself as if he were resisting temptation. He was a soldier, his father was in the service, too. Crying wasn't something Morell men did. They just didn't. He hadn't cried at Robbie Morell's funeral.So he wasn't going to now.

There is no way to imagine what it feels like to be shot at. I will never be with him when he is the most scared.

Afghanistan changed him, but Iraq sculpted him.

I feel like so much has been left undone. There are friends I won't see before I leave, there are bills I still need to pay. I haven't written as much as I've wanted, and there are countless things I've said that I wish I could correct, but this is a process that will never end. When my grandmother died she left a library full of books she never finished reading. This is how I feel now.

In the evening [the Iraqi interim governor of Maysan province] asked me for fifty dollars to repair his windows, which had been destroyed in a recent demonstration. Although he was the governor, his salary was only four hundred and fifty dollars a month, and Baghdad had still not agreed to give the governors an independent budget.... For the sake of a tiny sum of money - a couple thousand dollars a month from the hundred billion we had spent on the invasion - we were alienating our key partner a

When the president during the campaign said he was against nation building, I didn't realize he meant our nation.

Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated.

In the 10th century, Baghdad instituted a licensing exam that all doctors had to take before practicing as physicians

If freedom is free and none need worry, then what blood drops for thee?

Two people, one city, different times; connected by a memoir. Can love exist in a city destined for decades of misery?

Was I still myself? If so, who was I? I wasn’t really interested in knowing that. It had no sort of importance for me anymore. Some moorings had broken, some taboos had fallen, and a world of spells and anathemas was springing up from their ruins. What was terrifying about this whole affair was the ease with which I passed from one universe to another without feeling out of place. Such a smooth transition. I had gone to bed a docile, courteous boy, and I’d awakened with an inextinguishable rage

The greatest regret of my military career was as Commanding General of the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq in 2004-2005, he later wrote of the decision he made. I lost 169 soldiers during that year-long deployment. However, the monument we erected at Fort Hood, Texas, in memoriam lists 168 names. I approved the request of others not to include the name of the one soldier who committed suicide. I deeply regret my decision.

Military intervention cannot liberate women because it is embedded within a set of assumptions, beliefs, and social relations that reinforce and reproduce gender inequality, as well as other social inequalities within and across nation-states. Military intervention depends upon a belief in the legitimacy of armed violence in resolving political problems, which in turn depends upon our adherence to particular ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman.

Facing a deteriorating economy and a weakening hold over the populace, the Iraqi state under Saddam Hussein opted to revitalize tribal leaders and conservative practices as a means of stabilizing state power; those conservative practices were not an inherent feature of a predominantly Muslim country.

A few days later, Tuesday quietly crossed our apartment as I read a book and, after a nudge against my arm, put his head on my lap. As always, I immediately checked my mental state, trying to assess what was wrong. I knew a change in my biorhythms had brought Tuesday over, because he was always monitoring me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Breathing? Okay. Pulse? Normal. Was I glazed or distracted? Was I lost in Iraq? Was a dark period descending? I didn't think so, but I knew something

I miss it: the smell of sand, sweat, and gunpowder, rings of salt from dried sweat on my pants’ legs, and around my waist just under where my armor sits.

The violent subjugation of the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans will only ensure that those who oppose us will increasingly speak to us in the language we speak to them—violence.

the shooting and killing weren’t as black-and-white as most people think. The actions live in that hazy area of blown-apart stone walls and hesitations. Sometimes I shot when I shouldn’t have; other times I didn’t shoot when I should have. There was no way to explain why I did either. Everything happened so fast. Decisions had to be made. After I got home I began to see things in slow motion, see the actions that might’ve been mistakes.

The Air Force was confused about what it wanted me to be when I grew up. I applied for an ROTC scholarship out of high school because I wanted to be an astronaut. None of my teachers had ever broken the news to me that I couldn’t fly into space, so the third-grade dream remained.

Everyone's a knucklehead at one point or another.

To hear them laugh was to hear that everything was all right, but to see them laugh was to see otherwise

Always I am speaking English on behalf of fools

We’re wasting our time trying to deal with Baghdad, It’s better to call for independence today.

God works through people by stirring their hearts and sometimes people never know how they are helping others.

Evan stares at me.I try to hug him. He takes a step back. I pause, my heart in my throat. I’ve got to reach out to him, let myself be vulnerable. I find the courage, but he backs up again.“You can’t go to Iraq anymore.”“I know.”He looks up at Deanna, then back to me. “Did you fight bad guys? You told me you weren’t.” His voice is suspicious, full of accusation. He doesn’t trust me, and I don’t blame him for that.“No, Evan. I didn’t fight bad guys.”I can’t bring myself to tell him the complete tr

He is a true casualty of battle. There's not a physical scar, but look at the man's heart, and his head, and there are scars galore.

I am a Christian, but my time in Iraq has convinced me that God doesn't want to hear from me anymore. I've done things that He can never forgive. I've done them consciously. I've made decisions I must live with for years to come. I am not a victim. In each instance, I heard my conscience call for restraint, I told it to shut the fuck up and let me handle my business. All the sins I've committed, I've done with one objective: to keep my men alive.

It's a thin line between what we're calling acceptable and not acceptable. As a leader, you're supposed to know when not to cross it. But how do you know? Does the army teach us how to control our emotions? Does the army teach us how to deal with a friend bleeding out in front of you? No.

For the senior officers in Iraq, at least in 2005-2006, the responsibility was to the men at the top, the media, the message, the public back home - anything and everything, it seemed, but the soldiers under their command. And that's the ultimate betrayal of Iraq, the one that disillusioned me in Baghdad and Nineveh and keeps me outraged today.

Next time -- we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren!

Gentlemen. You are looking at the true Abraham Lincoln of Arabia. And in order to end our internal bickering - our civil war, if you will - I have solicited your aid.

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody.

Sami and I had exactly one day together in the old world. On Tuesday the jihadists came to our front door and knocked down our buildings. Our new world was hijacked planes, anthrax, and Afghanistan. Then we had snipers inside the Beltway. Then came Iraq. With every military action we were told reprisals were not just probable, but a foregone conclusion. An intelligence officer with a fancy PowerPoint briefed teachers on ‘our new reality.’ He called us ‘targets.’ He said ‘get used to it.’ He told

Who supports the troops? The troops support the troops.

I guess I was always looking for something. What it was, I didn’t know. I wanted help from the VA, but didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to be subjected to that second-rate treatment any longer. I wanted to find peace within myself, but didn’t know how or where to locate it. I wanted to be a sergeant again, a writer, less angry, a better husband, and to ward off the constant bombardment of war-related thoughts. Most of all, I didn’t want any more Americans coming home from Iraq in boxes or wit

I missed the war and the freedom that came with it. When you are that close to death, you feel free. Every breath you take could be your last. So you inhale and savor each breath, try not to think about your death even though signs of it are all around you. The freedom comes from knowing that if anybody gives you crap, you can eliminate them and the situation. Just shoot and get it over with.

I wanted people to know that we fired rounds into moving trucks and open windows to survive, not for anyone else’s freedom. Not for the Democrats. Not for Republicans. Just to survive.

The other day, we went somewhere, and did something.

Fuck it,” said Private First Class Chris Barnes, raising his hand. “Let’s do it. This sounds like a great fucking idea. Who wants to get blown up?” They started laughing. Watt, Barker, Cortez, and Private First Class Shane Hoeck all raised their hands. They did not give a damn anymore. It was all so absurd to them, that they were going to drive up and down a road for the next eight hours as bomb magnets. The only thing that they could do was laugh. “Hooray! We’re going out to get blown up!” they

Appearances can be misleading. You just never know what’s inside someone until he’s tested.

When you’re as small as I am, people don’t expect you to be much of an athlete. You either wilt under the weight of low expectations, or you rise above them.

Everyone acted like they knew so much about the war. But none of them really knew anything besides what they had learned through Internet searches or shady half-truths political pundits spouted from the comfort of their news desks. Nothing could ever be flushed out because nobody bothered to ask the troops or look at both sides of the story.

Are you okay, man?""Yeah, I'm good."It's a lie. I wonder if I will ever be good again.

I’ll give you one chance to run,but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear…“It’s best to watch out for men, like me.

I’m clinging to one last thought: pain is the harbinger of hope. You have to be alive to feel pain. If you are alive, then you have purpose. If you have purpose, then you have hope.

It’d be easy to blame everything on 9/11 or the wars that came after. It’s really about the choices we made. By necessity we adapt to the realities of the world we live in, but if we forget that how we live shapes and influences the world around us, then we’ve already lost.

In total this journey will take five flights and fifty-five hours, but in reality it began four decades and two generations ago when my uncle died in Vietnam.

The last two days I’ve been on long bus rides, driven through the countryside on the back of a motorbike, and crossed rivers on wooden boats, traversing currents into a different century. It’s late and dark, but I’m so close now. My uncle died five kilometers from here.

I felt so much pride, so much love. You get a handful of days like this in a lifetime. Take in every minute. They’ll be over soon enough, and you never know what tomorrow will bring.

All my life my dad felt this need to protect his kids from a war he fought, a war I believed could never reach out and touch us, could never hurt us—and yet he fed us lies with his answers, shielding us from the truth about what he did there, about what he saw, about who he was before the war, and about what he became because of it. He lied to protect us from his memories, from his nightmares. Standing with my dad at The Wall, I knew the truth—no one could know so many names engraved in granite

A son for a flag is a lot of sacrifice.

I have this thought, it’s horrible, and it makes me sick, but it’s true: one day these students will grow up and have their own kids, and they’re going to name them for men and women who will die in this war.

This is my worst fear. It’s not keeping my students safe from terrorists, it’s knowing what to do when the Chaplain comes to take Johnny out of class because not letting the terrorists win means sometimes the good guys are going to die. And those good guys have kids, and they’re sitting in my classroom.

The meeting began well, meaning it had the potential for being short.

I felt like I should salute. If only I knew how.

Teaching isn’t rocket science. It’s about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don’t need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or not they like you, but about the kids and doing what’s best for them.

The service members who defend our way of life ask very little in return, but they deserve teachers who will be as relentless in teaching their children as the military is in protecting our interests at home and abroad.