You’re the military analyst, writer, historian: you, above all people, should know that those who decline to take a hand in controlling events surren… - Charles E. Gannon

That means we have nothing to shoot at, no efficacious response. So we do something pointless. And we feel better.

Richard, we have fallen into the common trap of seeing ourselves at the center of the universe: all that goes on around us somehow has us as its subject and raison d’etre. But in reality, all the events, all the plans, all the acts we interpret as intentionally malign—or benign—to us may, in fact, have almost nothing to do with our species.

Sometimes, thinking just didn’t do any good, didn’t provide any answers. Because for some questions—such as the arbitrariness of life and death during wartime—there weren’t any answers.