If they do it, it’s terrorism, if we do it, it’s fighting for freedom.
–
Anthony Quainton, U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, 1984 – to a group of
concerned U.S. citizens when asked to explain the difference between
U.S. government actions in Nicaragua and the violence it condemns as
terrorism elsewhere in the world.
=
It is in the nature
of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the
last to know–or care–about circumstances in the colonies.
– Bertrand Russell
=
The
president has adopted a policy of ‘anticipatory self-defense’ that is
alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl
Harbor, on a date which, as an earlier American president said it
would, lives in infamy. Franklin D. Roosevelt was right, but today it
is we Americans who live in infamy.
– Arthur Schlesinger
=
I
am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those
who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the
wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. Some
of these young men think that war is all glory but let me say war is
all hell.
– William Tecumseh Sherman
====
Why is this
man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him.
Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White
House because God put him there for a time such as this.
– Lt Gen William Boykin, speaking of G. W. Bush, New York Times, 17 October 2003
=
God
gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and
unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany
– Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler
=
A
tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.
Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom
they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less
easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
– Aristotle
=
If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier – just so long as I’m the dictator.
– George W. Bush, 18 December 2000
=
International law? I better call my lawyer; he didn’t bring that up to me.
– George W. Bush, 12 December 2003
====
…
the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but
opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one
of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of
ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency
specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote
locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the
public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed
security and economic interests are still protected in secret.
– Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author
=
Our
men . . . have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners
and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10
up…. Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to “make them
talk,” and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and
peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . . stood them on a bridge
and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float
down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.
–
Philadelphia Ledger newspaper in 1901, from its Manila [Philippines]
correspondent during the US war with Spain for the control of the
Philippines
=
The only place you and I disagree . . . is
with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about the
civilians, and I (in contrast) don’t give a damn. I don’t care. .
. . I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. . . Does that bother you? I just
want you to think big.
– Richard Nixon to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the Watergate tapes
=
This
business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s
homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate
into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark
and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically
deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
– Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
=
The
essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the
persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life … A
ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its
successors… Who wields power is not important, provided that the
hierarchical structure remains always the same.
– George Orwell, 1984
=
We
have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them;
destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows
and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens
of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by
Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we
have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves
of our business partner Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag
over that swag. And so, by the Providences of God – and the phrase is
the government’s, not mine – we are a World Power
– Mark Twain http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/mark_twain_war_prayer.html
=
A
Jap’s a Jap. There is no way to determine their loyalty… This coast
is too vulnerable. No Jap should come back to this coast except on a
permit from my office.
– General John L. DeWitt, head, Western Defense Command; before the US House Naval Affairs Subcommittee
=
The
vested interests – if we explain the situation by their influence – can
only get the public to act as they wish by manipulating public opinion,
by playing either upon the public’s indifference, confusions,
prejudices, pugnacities or fears. And the only way in which the power
of the interests can be undermined and their maneuvers defeated is by
bringing home to the public the danger of its indifference, the
absurdity of its prejudices, or the hollowness of its fears; by showing
that it is indifferent to danger where real danger exists; frightened
by dangers which are nonexistent.
– Sir Norman Angell 1872 – 1967
=
Iniquity,
committed in this world, produces not fruit immediately, but, like the
earth, in due season, and advancing by little and little, it eradicates
the man who committed it. …justice, being destroyed, will destroy;
being preserved, will preserve; it must never therefore be violated.
– Manu 1200 bc
===