when humans go to war, god in no way wills it...

when America could have used its unprecedented power to lead the world away from war, what will it reveal about our national character that we did the opposite? - j. carroll

why, of course, the people don't want war....but, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship....voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. that is easy. all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. it works the same way in any country. - hermann goering (1946) [some things never change]

no child is born with discrimination in his or her mind, hatred in his or her heart, or rocks in his or her hands. these are acquired conditions. - dr. jane schaller (president, international pediatric association)

there are two ways to use the nuke; as a source of world destruction and as a source of world power. we did the former at the end of world war ii, which was the exact beginning of the cold war. we have been doing the latter every day since. and why should [any other nation] not want to imitate us? - j. carroll

you can't have democracy within nations while repudiating democratic values among nations. - j. carroll

for 175 years, we have not been that kind of country. - robert kennedy on preventive war [well bobby, looks like two centuries was too much - as james carroll says "america was not meant to be like this. we are no longer ourselves.]

mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. - jfk

anyone who is not against us is for us. - jesus of nazareth (mark 9:40) [seems bush missed this verse when he was born again]

the more we smash those who hate us, the more they hate us, and the more of them there are. iraq is showing that american firepower is precisely what creates america's enemies. - j. carroll

rumsfeld has become quite a warmonger. he did not seem so when he came and visited us in the 1980's. - tariq aziz (2003 from iraq)

high-minded rhetoric can be reassuring. yet when washington gets down to policy, some torture is deplorable, some is ignorable, and some is fundable...one might think that an appropriate way to oppose torture would be to stop financing it. - norman solomon

in the wars of the 1990's civilian deaths constituted between 75 and 90 percent of all war deaths. - chris hedges [are we honestly to believe that the pentagon corrected this in a mere few years?]

the notion that humanitarian violations can be redressed with random destruction and killing by advanced technological means is inherently suspect. this is mere pretext for our arrogant assertion of dominance and power in defiance of international law. we make the nonnegotiable demands and rules, and implement them by military force. - walter j. rockler (nuremburg prosecutor on kosovo) [why clinton and wesley clark do not deserve any credit whatsoever...and still all too relevant today.]

for all the poppycock about the vietnamese war [or iraq] clashing with our past traditions, we have long been an imperialistic people. the truman doctrine and the johnson doctrine [and now the bush doctrine] are only extensions of the monroe doctrine, new embodiments of that manifest destiny to which our expansionists appealed in a less cautious day. bolivar once said that we plagued latin america in the name of liberty; today we do it to a growing sector of the world. everywhere we talk liberty and social reform but we end up by allying ourselves with native oligarchies and military cliques - just as we have done in vietnam [and afghanistan]. in a showdown, we reach for the gun. - i.f. stone

acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies. acts of parliament have closed a few. - gen. william odom, us army retired

what does it profit us if we gain extreme security and lose our democracy? not everyone in iraq, afterall, was getting their hands and/or their ears cut off by saddam hussein. in the middle of that society were hordes of iraqis who had all the security they needed even if there was no freedom other than the full-fledged liberty offered by dictators to be free to speak with hyperbolic hosannas for the leader. so yes, there are more important things to safeguard then security, and one of them is to protect the much-beleagured integrity of our democracy. - norman mailer

NO GRIEVANCES OR POLICIES WILL JUSTIFY RESORT TO AGGRESSIVE WAR. IT IS UTTERLY RENOUNCED AND CONDEMNED AS AN INSTRUMENT OF POLICY. - Justice Robert L. Jackson (Nuremburg Trials)