- "Terrorism is a direct response to the crimes our
government has committed against foreigners (besides which, the actual
terrorists are within our own government)." Concerning drugs: "If
they didn't exist, our government would have to invent them, the better
to enact laws aimed at keeping the citizens 'sinless and obedient.' -
Gore Vidal
-
- "If only more of today's military personnel would
realize that they are being used by the owning elites as a publicly-subsidized
capitalist goon squad. - Smedley Butler
-
- "The United States now runs the risk, so familiar
to historians of the rise and fall of previous Great Powers, of what might
be called "imperial overstretch" - that is to say, decision makers
in Washington must face the awkward and enduring fact that the sum of the
total United States global interests and obligations is nowadays far greater
than the country's power to defend them all simultaneously. --Paul
Kennedy, 'The Rise and Fall of Great Powers'
-
- "When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies
by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he
is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require
a leader. --Plato, 347 B.C.
-
- "Governments need armies to protect them from their
enslaved and oppressed subjects." --Tolstoy
-
- "Man, biologically considered...is the most formidable
of all the beasts of prey, and indeed the only one that preys systematically
on his own species. --William James
-
- "In over two hundred years, the North American continent
has not been attacked - nor even seriously-threatened with invasion by
Japan, Germany, the Soviet Union, or anyone else. But over a million
Americans have been killed in wars and trillions of dollars have been
spent by the military - nearly $13 trillion on the Cold War alone."
--Thomas H. Naylor & William H. Willimon 'Downsizing the USA'
-
- "A great war always creates more scoundrels than
it kills." --Unknown
-
- "Going to war accelerated the move from indirect
to direct rule. Almost any state that makes war finds that it cannot
pay for the effort from its accumulated reserves and current revenues.
Almost all war making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize
the means of combat- including men - from reluctant citizens who have other
uses for their resources." --Charles Tilly
-
- "Whoever has an army has power, and war decides
everything." --Mao Tse-Tung
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