Call it habit or conditioning or socialization: The citizens of the United States have essentially forfeited any capacity to ask first-order question… - Andrew Bacevich

For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors.

The way a nation wages war — the role allotted to the people in defending the country and the purposes for which it fights — testifies to the actual character of its political system.

You know, we live in a country where if you want to go bomb somebody, there's remarkably little discussion about how much it might cost, even though the costs almost inevitably end up being orders of magnitude larger than anybody projected at the outcome.