A Quote by Chris Hedges

I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by mythmakers- historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists, and the state- all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty.
The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice - is often the means of their regeneration.
Does he [the president] possess the power of making war? That power is exclusively vested in Congress. . . . It is the exclusive province of Congress to change a state of peace into a state of war.
The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.
A great many of the epic fantasies, from The Lord of the Rings onward, are about war, but to my mind, a lot of it doesn't really deal honestly with the consequences of war, what war does to us, as a society, what war does to us, as individuals, and the struggle for power, in the same way, and what we're fighting for.
For instance, the Persian Gulf War was a miniature world war. It took place in a small geographical area. In this sense it was a local war. But it was one that made use of all the power normally reserved for global war.
Liberty is not about class war, income war, race war, national war, a war between the sexes, or any other conflict apart from the core conflict between individuals and those who would seek power and control over the human spirit. Liberty is the dream that we can all work together, in ways of our choosing and of our own human volition, to realize a better life.
It is often observed that the first casualty of war is truth, but how do you tell the truth without betraying the sacrifice of those who accepted the terms of battle? War is a sacrificial system that creates its own justification.
Particularly when the war power is invoked to do things to the liberties of people, or to their property or economy that only indirectly affect conduct of the war and do not relate to the engagement of the war itself, the constitutional basis should be scrutinized with care. ... I would not be willing to hold that war powers may be indefinitely prolonged merely by keeping legally alive a state of war that had in fact ended. I cannot accept the argument that war powers last as long as the effects and consequences of war for if so they are permanent -- as permanent as the war debts.
War is not inherent in human beings. We learn war and we learn peace. The culture of peace is something which is learned, just as violence is learned and war culture is learned.
There are few historians who would challenge the fact that the funding of World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War was accomplished by the Mandrake Mechanism through the Federal Reserve System.
The federal war on drugs is a total failure... The federal government's going in there and overriding state laws... Why don't we handle the drugs like we handle alcohol? ... I fear the drug war because it undermines our civil liberties. It magnifies our problems on the borders. We've spent over the last 40 years a trillion dollars on this war and - believe me - the kids can still get the drugs. It just hasn't worked.
I find it scandalous not only that there was so little discussion of the costs of the Iraq war before we went to war - this was, after all, a war of choice - but even five years into the war, the Administration has not provided a comprehensive accounting of the war.
War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.
Life is war, and marriage provides us with a close and intimate ally with whom we may wage this war. The battle requires bold love, forgiveness, confrontation, and repentance.
All the papers contained nothing but fantastic stories about the war. However, for several months we had been accustomed to war talk. We had so often packed our service trunks that the whole thing had become tedious.
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