A Quote by Howard Zinn
I had volunteered for the Air Force and was an enthusiastic bombardier. While dropping bombs on Europe, I generally didn't understand what I was doing.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed. 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes.
The atom bomb was no “great decision.” It was used in the war, and for your information, there were more people killed by fire bombs in Tokyo than dropping of the atomic bombs accounted for. It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness. The dropping of the bombs stopped the war, save millions of lives.
You can't carpet bomb ISIS if you don't have planes and bombs to attack them with. And if we continue those cuts that we're doing , not to mention additional cuts, we are going to be left with the oldest and the smallest Air Force this country has ever had, and that leaves us less safe.
The boyfriend of the student music teacher came in: "Hey, kids, this is a real Air Force pilot." I asked him something to the effect of how it felt to be dropping bombs on children in Vietnamese villages. And it got very icy in there all of a sudden, and finally the teacher said, "Oh, well, Eric reads a lot of newspapers. Next question."
I did not feel proud of our country, seeing that we were bombing peasant villages, that we were not just hitting military targets, that children were being killed. We were terrorizing the North Vietnamese with our enormous Air Force. They had no Air Force at all. They were a little pitiful country and we were terrorizing them with our bombs. And no, I did not feel proud at all.
So I do have this ambivalence. Obviously I'm against militaries, because of what militaries do. In many ways though, the air force was unmilitary-like. They dropped bombs on people, but...they had a golf course.
I did not know much history when I became a bombardier in the U.S. Air Force in World War II. Only after the War did I see that we, like the Nazis, had committed atrocities... Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, my own bombing missions. And when I studied history after the War, I learned from reading on my own, not from my university classes, about the history of U.S. expansion and imperialism.
I was the first Navy, Marine or Air Force person who had been an astronaut to return back to the Air Force. I had certain expectations about what would be a reasonable and desirable position to be assigned to after my years of service.
I did not feel very patriotic. I did not feel proud of our country, seeing that we were bombing peasant villages, that we were not just hitting military targets, that children were being killed. We were terrorizing the North Vietnamese with our enormous Air Force. They had no Air Force at all. They were a little pitiful country and we were terrorizing them with our bombs. And no, I did not feel proud at all.
The people designing the weapons literally often didn't know how they were being handled in the field by the Air Force - and a lot of people in the Air Force didn't understand some of the dangers. There's a very strong element of madness in this.
We've been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It's been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.
There are of course economic advantages to having Turkey as a member of the European club. It's a developing country with a large, reasonably well-trained labor force at a time when the European birth rate is dropping at a catastrophic rate and Europe is graying. It offers opportunities for greater trade and investment to the benefit of both Turkey and Europe.
You were cool if you had on a pair of Air Force 1s. It's still a staple for me while on tour.
The other thing that happened was my last military assignment - this was in the air force; I had enlisted in order to avoid being drafted as a private, and of course I only practiced medicine or psychiatry in the air force so I was never in any kind of violent combat.
I feel like everyone, at least all teenagers these days, wears Air Force 1s or Converse. But I would much rather have Air Force 1s over Converse for sure. I think Air Force 1s are cooler and they're more comfortable.
It has to be an actress like Marion Cotillard [in Allied] because there are so many levels to it. It's set in the Second World War, when lots of people were doing things that, outside of a war, you wouldn't do, like killing and dropping bombs. She's doing things that one wouldn't approve of, but it's war.
Related Authors
Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
French
Historian
Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes
American
Historian
David McCullough Quotes
American
Historian
Edward Gibbon Quotes
English
Historian
Hannah Arendt Quotes
German
Historian
Henry Adams Quotes
American
Historian
Herodotus Quotes
Greek
Historian
Linda Colley Quotes
British
Historian
Livy Quotes
Roman
Historian
Michel Foucault Quotes
French
Historian
Robert Dallek Quotes
American
Historian
Sallust Quotes
Roman
Historian
Tacitus Quotes
Roman
Historian
Tariq Ali Quotes
Pakistani
Historian
Thucydides Quotes
Greek
Historian
Will Durant Quotes
American
Historian