A Quote by Rutger Bregman
Most bayonets throughout history have probably not been used because soldiers just can't do it, something holds them back... the same goes for shooting the enemy. We've got this fascinating evidence from the Second World War, and also from other wars, that most soldiers couldn't do it.
Related Quotes
I'm shooting a gangbanger, but as a dignified man. That's pretty much what war photography did: seeing images of soldiers in a dignified way. They might have been killers in Vietnam, but I'm seeing another side of them, and looking at images of the the American soldiers, also the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong - I never saw an enemy.
With soldiers, their wives are so fundamental in their relationships, and yet there's this kind of other war happening back in the States, where wives of soldiers don't quite understand what their husbands have been through, because their husbands won't really talk about it, and that's really the hidden war.
We know that there were so many Japanese American soldiers in World War II who were fighting in Europe despite the fact that their families, their parents were back home in American prison camps. It's savagely ironic that between themselves and the African-American soldiers, who were also segregated and didn't see the fruition of the work the culminated in the Civil Rights Act until the '60s, that these American heroes and their stories are not well known; and the fact that the 442nd/100th became the most decorated unit in U.S. history.
Protecting the city is my job, which doesn't translate into hatred. This is war, and in most wars, professional soldiers don't hate the enemy. Hatred can blind you in ways that mar your judgment.
The most effective method of propaganda directed at the enemy forces is to release captured soldiers and give the wounded medical treatment... Whenever soldiers of enemy forces are captured, we immediately conduct propaganda among them...This immediately knocks the bottom out of the enemy's slander that the Communist bandits kill everyone on sight.
History is reticent about women who were common soldiers, who bore arms, belonged to regiments, and took part in battles on the same terms as men, though hardly a war has been waged without women soldiers in the ranks.
The rules of engagement are so lax that soldiers are shooting and killing Iraqis under mere suspicion, and tragedies are everyday. There are road killings, killings on the road when someone is trying to pass a convoy and they get shot. Or if a roadside bomb goes off, the soldiers just start shooting in all directions.
I went out to cover the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fundamentally [in Buzzing at the Sill] because I was interested in war as a notion and in experiencing it. I was interested in history and how societies form. I was interested in the recent history of what had provoked these wars. So when I finally got out there, I was really seeing the wars through the American perspective, much more than through being embedded with American soldiers and Marines.
I've never been embedded with American soldiers or British soldiers or Iraqi soldiers or any other.
The Philippines and the U.S. have had a strong relationship with each other for a very long time now. We have a shared history. We have shared values, democracy, freedom, and we have been in all the wars together in modern history, the World War, Second World War, Cold War, Vietnam, Korea, now the war on terrorism.
The question is who threw chemicals on the same day on our soldiers. That's the same question. Technically, not the soldiers. Soldiers don't throw missiles on themselves. So, either the rebels, the terrorists, or a third party. We don't have any clue yet.
We're living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.
I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. soldiers. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them - active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular - to try and end the war.
The great error of nearly all studies of war, an error into which all socialists have fallen, has been to consider war as an episode in foreign politics when it is especially an act of internal politics and the most atrocious act of all . . . Since the directing apparatus has no other way of fighting the enemy than by sending its own soldiers, under compulsion, to their death-the war of one state against another state resolves itself into a war of the state and the military apparatus against its own people.
Whenever I look at pictures of horrific things that soldiers do or that have been done to soldiers I always feel sorry for everybody involved because politics throws them into these horrific situations where really it's just 18-year-old kids.
It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another 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
Howard Zinn Quotes
American
Historian
Linda Colley Quotes
British
Historian
Livy Quotes
Roman
Historian
Michel Foucault Quotes
French
Historian
Robert Dallek Quotes
American
Historian
Tacitus Quotes
Roman
Historian
Tariq Ali Quotes
Pakistani
Historian
Thucydides Quotes
Greek
Historian
Will Durant Quotes
American
Historian