Quotes about military

Our sainted aunts prate of living for others while our rich uncles call us mollycoddles for not fighting for what we want. Murder is a patriotic act if you commit it in a uniform it is the blackest sin if you kill someone while wearing a gray flannel suit.

Civilians are like beans you buy 'em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy.But you can't buy fighting spirit.

He who is ready to die for his country is a fool. For he didn’t choose where he was born and where he was born didn’t choose him.

I have always that there ought to be some kind of mandatory national service, not necessarily in the military but to show everybody that freedom isn't free, that everybody has an obligation to the nation as a community.

You don't get the fox to be in charge of the chicken coop. You don't give the outgoing regime - which has been practicing dictatorship, is an authoritarian system, it's a bunch of military people - the task of changing Egypt into a second republic, a new Egypt with democracy, freedom, rights, etc.

Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Plato, and Cicero, just to name a few, all lived in pagan societies. Some of the greatest political and military leaders of all time, such as Alexander the Great, Pericles of Athens, Hannibal of Carthage, and Julius Caesar of Rome, were all pagans, or else living in a pagan society.

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

In my view, targeted lethal force is at its least controversial when it is on its strongest, most traditional legal foundation. The essential mission of the U.S. military is to capture or kill an enemy. Armies have been doing this for thousands of years. As part of a congressionally authorized armed conflict, the foundation is even stronger.

The military tribunals currently underway at Guantanamo Bay create a clear legal process, as affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, for adjudicating the cases of these terrorists, when possible. Those efforts would be severely undercut by moving the detainees to the United States.

I think 'The Act of Killing' forced people to look at the problem, but the problem is actually a state run by thugs, or a shadow state, a part of the state that's run by thugs, and a military that enjoys complete legal - not just impunity, but immunity.

For years, the Bush Administration eviscerated all the military and legal structures that were designed to separate the innocent from the guilty in the 'Global War on Terror.'

We knew that if the photos of CIA officers conducting authorized EIT (enhanced interrogation techniques) ever got out, the difference between a legal, authorized, necessary, and safe program and the mindless actions of some MPs (military police) would be buried by the impact of the images.

My dad was in the military. It was difficult sometimes, because he would have to be away a lot, and we would have to move around a lot. Trying to adapt to new schools and new places can be really tough.

Because of his military service, Dad was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

I was born in a hurricane in Pensacola, Florida... my dad was in the military, so we moved all over the place. But I consider myself a southerner from Louisiana. I've lived in Texas for most of my adult life.

My dad was in the military, yeah. He was in the Air Force, and he was a doctor, so he would go places for six months here, and two years there. And I was home-schooled because I played the violin, and I did a lot of competitions.

The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they're protecting us.

On the battlefield, the military pledges to leave no soldier behind. As a nation, let it be our pledge that when they return home, we leave no veteran behind.

Therefore, if one were to consider that there was virtually no possibility of success through the US-Japan negotiations, the military and economic pressures would only force Japan into further crisis if time were allowed to pass in vain.

There was a military police brigade with over 3,400 soldiers getting ready to go home because their mission - prisoner-of-war operations - was finished.

There are people with otherwise chaotic and disorganized lives, a certain type of person that's always found a home in the restaurant business in much the same way that a lot of people find a home in the military.

As much as we Egyptians treasure our military, acting alone it cannot provide the legitimacy to lay the foundations for democracy.

She had been proud of his decision to serve his country, her heart bursting with love and admiration the first time she saw him outfitted in his dress blues.

Question the answers, I repeated every class. Reevaluate your conclusions when the evidence changes.

I see things in windows and I say to myself that I want them. I want them because I want to belong. I want to be liked by more people, I want to be held in higher regard than others. I want to feel valued, so I say to myself to watch certain shows. I watch certain shows on the television so I can participate in dialogues and conversations and debates with people who want the same things I want. I want to dress a certain way so certain groups of people are forced to be attracted to me. I want to

I wanted that future officer to weigh decisions with a supple mind and to be comfortable with nuance and uncertainty.

One more dance along the razor's edge finished. Almost dead yesterday, maybe dead tomorrow, but alive, gloriously alive, today.

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.

... A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopolyof the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.

Peace surfaced here. Hard to imagine a person finding peace through war, but no one finds peace in war—peace finds you. It crawls into your sleeping bag and helps you fall asleep, nudges your arm, tells you to turn over, think about home.

I write to get ideas out of my head

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.

By portraying war as an opportunity for virtuous acts, the politicians romanticize evil.

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed.

If you can't experience the humanity of people who don't look like you, you're not civilized enough to be an officer of the peace.

Remember... start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. But if you take some risks, step up when times are toughest, face down the bullies, life up the downtrodden, and never, ever give up - if you do these things, then you can change your life for the better... and maybe the world!

I cut our paper dinner with a pair of scissors borrowed from the front desk of the hotel. I cooked with a spice rack box of crayons – sixteen colors. I seasoned the pumpkin pie with orange crayon, and basted the turkey's crisp skin in brown. I was remorseless with my sketchbook abattoir, playing the part of carnivore just as surely as I was play-acting the role of wife. I may as well have been a wax figure in a dollhouse eating the wax-scented food.

Every Sunday behind bibles, virgins,soldiers tight against me, longing,and my pelvis rubbing gods'to the big black woman voices.Soldiers tight against me, longing,all that rising, sitting, kneelingto the big black woman voices,spirits warming, tensing, folding, thenall that rising, sitting, kneelinglike some kind of dance, a mating,spirits warming, tensing, folding andgod went “Shhhhh” between my thighs –

Never depend on a single income. Make Investments to create a second source.” - Warren Buffet

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.

As he moves through his day, sometimes he stops and just stares at me. There is something on the tip of his tongue. But he doesn't say it. I'm not sure he knows what it is.

You speak Arabic? Tell him my name is Infidel Redeemed by Christ.

To fall in love twice, with the same person, you need to grow another heart. That's all I do in my secret underground laboratory at night...

You could say I lost my faith in science and progressYou could say I lost my belief in the holy ChurchYou could say I lost my sense of directionYou could say all of this and worse, ...Some would say I was a lost man in a lost worldYou could say I lost my faith in the people on TVYou could say I'd lost my belief in our politiciansThey all seemed like game show hosts to me...I never saw no miracle of scienceThat didn't go from a blessing to a curseI never saw no military solutionThat didn't always

Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.

As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may currently be promoting.

Take your time.Stay away from the easy going.Never take the same way twice.Gunny Arndt's rules for successful reconnaissance Guadalcanal 1942

If you control the media, the government, the police and military, the religions, the education system, and the basic needs in life then I guess that the only thing left to control is the people.Oh...sorry, I spoke too late.

My parents didn't settle for the lives their parents lived. They stepped out and up, my father lying his way into the Navy when he was too young to enlist, my mother marrying this fugitive from the mills when she was too young for marriage. A smart guy, he took every course the Navy offered, aced them all, becoming the youngest chief warrant officer in the service. After Pearl Harbor the Navy needed line officers fast and my dad was suddenly wearing gold stripes.My mother watched and learned, ge

But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you think that officers should look like. You have to think in ways that they are comfortable with.The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked good in uniform and talked right and did well enough not to

In times of war, as in life, surround yourself with people of value, virtue and high morals, because it's always better to lose, perish and vanish in glory than to live in shame.

No. He’s like me at the moment. We’re both nomadic. He’s still in the military. Currently training SEALs in Coronado, California.” “I’m sorry, training seals? To do what?” Boomer grinned. He didn’t understand why, but she so delighted him. “Navy SEALs, honey. He trains them to be smarter, faster, and stronger than the bad guy.” “Do they leap tall buildings in a single bound,” she asked without missing a beat. Boomer would not have been able to hold back the laugh if his life depended on it.

To have the opportunity to know your parents is to have the opportunity to truly know yourself.

Heroism doesn’t always happen in a burst of glory. Sometimes small triumphs and large hearts change the course of history. Sometimes a chicken can save a man’s life.

Very few people in the USA realize that a nuclear war was waged with nature in the southwest by their own military.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

The Marine Corps forced me to come home from Afghanistan. It's up to me to allow myself to come home.

One of the special teams turned sadistic in Kandahar and took out a village. The organization reacted swiftly by shutting down the program and denying any and all knowledge. Contracts were severed. Their service records heavily redacted. Overnight, the entire team was out. Out of the military, out of the war, out of the only life they knew. Team Fear took the fall.

Generals, on the average, are far less bellicose than journalists or patriotic housewives: They know the horrors of a war and they dislike any break in the routine

My family says they are proud of me. Of course, I would rather hear this than the contrary, but I cannot say that I am proud of myself, so I find that I cannot 'talk about it'.

I'm done doing this!' Obama said, finally erupting. 'We've all agreed on a plan. And we're all going to stick to that plan. I haven't agreed to anything beyond that.'The 30,000 was a 'hard cap,' he said forcefully. 'I don't want enablers to be used as wiggle room. The easy thing for me to do - politically - would actually be to say no' to the 30,000. Then he gestured out the Oval Office windows, across the Potomac, in the direction of the Pentagon. Referring to Gates and the uniformed military,

The most insidious of our country, the greediest and highest rung of our socioeconomic ladder, line their pockets with misappropriated funds as military personnel and hordes of civilians are maimed or killed. It’s not their children out there, blinded by manufactured patriotism or lured into the service with the promise of economic stability, all with the sanctimonious blessings of misguided public consent by way of corporate, state-sponsored media. It won’t be their children who are terrorized

War is too important to be left to the generals

Do you want to know what General Putnam is thinking? It’s this. He’s thinking that he can’t win the war if he doesn’t keep the people on his side. He’s thinking that he can’t keep the people on his side if the troops are running amok among the civilian population—raping the women, stealing cattle, burning houses. He is determined to scare the wits out of the troops to keep them in line. And he’s thinking that it doesn’t matter very much who he executes to do it. So many men have died, so many mo

Space and time blurred and the void filled with explosions and shards and narrow misses and voices in the Force: his pilots, laughing and swearing and howling to their deaths. He laughed and swore and howled along with them, the silence unbearable.Kill, kill, and kill again, slaughter the starfighters, slaughter the Tuskens, every loss is the same loss, every pain springs from one source. Save Kothlis, save Coruscant, save Padmé. Save them all.

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

War creates many strange juxtapositions, perhaps none stranger than this: men who are doing their utmost to kill other men can transform in a split second into lifesavers. Soldiers who encounter a wounded man (often an enemy) become tender, caring angels of mercy. The urge to kill and the urge to save sometimes run together simultaneously.

Whatever the challenge, never quit, never give up, never surrender.

I dreamed in night vision; whiteflowers of nocturnalgun fire – day residue shot to hell. If I held my dreamsto a windowsill,sun would sievethrough my screams.

Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?

We don't all make it out the other side, not all of us. But somewhere, there's the click of a pen, a proud signature, a father's hand on a young man's shoulder, and we reload. That's the sound of our collective gun cocking, the click of a pen. That's us racking another round in the chamber. Fire that boy out, hope you hit something. If he gets three before he goes home in his own bag, then the numbers look good. That father gets his medal. No one else to wear it.

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?

Soldiers are not trained for retire

1. Most wars are asymmetrical or irregular.2. In these wars, the guerrillas/irregulars/insurgents do not aim for military victory.3. You can not defeat these groups by killing lots of their members. In fact, they want you to do that.4. High-tech weaponry is mostly useless in these wars.5. “Hearts and minds,” meaning propaganda and morale, are more important than military superiority.6. Most people are not rational; they are tribal: “My gang yeah, your gang boo!” It really is that simple. The res

The old refrain is that there are no atheists in foxholes. That's nonsense. They are there by the millions. There is little in combat that will lead one to look upon the Creator with favor. What can't be there, instead, is the individualist, the selfish, the self-consumed, the self-centered, the aloof loner. Such a man cannot long survive. The terror of combat cannot be described by fear of death. There are worse things. The world can suddenly become a very cold place...He needs warmth, a fire,

War soaks into your bones, drills down into the marrow like a parasite. It blots your life like ink spilled on snow white paper, and it has its perils even long after you've given it up.

Well, I once recall an old master sergeant once telling me that NCOs look after the men so that officers can figure out how to get them killed. That's the difference between maintenance and command.

European historians have often, though not unanimously, assumed that European modern warfare was the one true path, a system that developed logically and inevitably from the nature of the advancing technology of guns. Since Europeans by their own definition were the most rational and logical of people, their mode of warfare was also the most rational and logical. Those who did not adopt it after seeing it were being deliberately irrational, or lacked the ability to advance their polity to the po

I do not think the long-range bullets I fire provide the mark of a man; I am only dimly aware that they are dehumanising me.They are my opium tto see me through my time here. But with each hit they give, they only provide a feeling respite from the past I cannot escape from and thre present I have chosen to mire myself in. And, grounded as I am in the reality of this hill, I do not yet fully appreciate how this addiction is infecting my future with malediction.With this clinical, psychopathicall

You are silent now who once stood on battlefields ravaged by destruction unimaginable, holding in those desperate places the line of freedom for others you would never know, and who would never know you. And being one of those you never knew, I would give all I have to clasp your hand one single time, look into eyes that witnessed the bloodied carnage that results when freedom refuses to bow to chains of any kind, and simply say 'thank you.

Sometimes, if your opponent is determined to win the battle, let him win the wrong battle.

What was it like? Hell if I know. But next time someone asks.... I'll answer crooked, and I'll answer long. And when they get confused or angry, I'll smile. Finally, I'll think. Someone who understands.

Insightful, creative mind, dedicated, and wonderful friend and co-worker whom I had the privilege to work with in Mosul, Iraq ‘07. His understanding of life’s experiences and relationships is truly an art. His willingness to help a friend in need and go the “extra-mile” to get to know someone is amazing. Carl has truly been blessed with the gift of writing as a way of reaching out to others. It is a blessing to call him my dear friend.

If we are fortunate, we get to experience a lifetime event, And in my case it was meeting a true friend that God sent. A friend is someone that I will always care for and cherish, There is a bond between us that I definitely won’t let perish.

Is killing a known terrorist wrong? I ask this, did the terrorist allow any of his victims quarter? No, then allow him no quarter, and hoist the black flag.

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.

If we can use an H-bomb--and as you said it's no checker game; it's real, it's war and nobody is fooling around--isn't it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed . . . and even losing the war . . . when you've got a real weapon you can use to win? What's the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?'Zim didn't answer at once, which was

The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.

-You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!

When facing a decision that stands a 50/50 chance of being correct, the choice made will be wrong 80% of the time. Rick Coxen

...Obama said, 'I welcome debate among my team, but I won't tolerate division.

This is where people misunderstand war. When you attack another country for its resources, you are the pirate. But when you protect your country from the pirates, you are the hero.

The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and

It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.

War means fighting, and fighting means killing.

My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat, situation excellent. I attack.