Miles Browning, Paul Putnam, and I were still the only ones who knew our destination, so my order burst on the task force like a thousand-pounder. My operations officer, Comdr. William H. Buracker, brought it to me and asked incredulously, "Admiral, did you authorize this thing?" "Yes." "Do you realize that this means war?" "Yes." Bill protested, "Goddamnit, Admiral, you can't start a private war on your own! Who's going to take responsibility?" I replied, "I'll take it! If anything gets in my way, we'll shoot first and argue afterwards."

Obviously riled, he growled at Lawson, “The right to unobstructed passage covers our vessels as much as anyone else’s.”
“It covers no warship bearing instructions to intercept, question, search or detain any other spaceship it considers suspicious,” declared the other. “Violators of the law are not entitled to claim protection of the law.”
“Can you tell me how to conduct a war between systems without sending armed ships through space?” asked Markhamwit, bitterly sarcastic.
Lawson waved an indifferent hand. “We aren’t the least bit interested in that problem. It is your own worry.”
“It cannot be done,” Markhamwit shouted.
“That’s most unfortunate,” remarked Lawson, full of false sympathy. “It creates an awful state of no-war.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“Is peace funny?”
“War is a serious matter,” bawled Markhamwit, striving to retain a grip on his temper. “It cannot be ended with a mere flick of the finger.”
“The fact should be borne in mind by those who so nonchalantly start them,” advised Lawson, quite unmoved by the Great Lord’s ire.
“The Nileans started it.”
“They say that you did.”
“They are incorrigible liars.”
“That’s their opinion of you, too.”
A menacing expression on his face, Markhamwit said, “Do you believe them?”
“We never believe opinions.”
“You are evading my question. Somebody has to be a liar. Who do you think it is?”
“We haven’t looked into the root-causes of your dispute. It is not our woe. So without any data to go upon we can only hazard a guess.”
“Go ahead and do some hazarding then,” Markhamwit invited. He licked expectant lips.
“Probably both sides have little regard for the truth,” opined Lawson, undeterred by the other’s attitude. “It is the usual setup. When war breaks out the unmitigated liar comes into his own. His heyday lasts for the duration. After that, the victorious liars hang the vanquished ones.”

that shock of fear that runs right through an army before battle, that shock is Dionysos.

"However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if some of you survive, the world would not believe him. There will perhaps be suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed: they will say they are the exaggerations of Allied propaganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you. We will be the ones to dictate the history of the Lagers." — SS Officer, quoted in The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

Men of Athens... In truth I would not tell it to you if I did not care so much for all Hellas; I myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery. I tell you, then, that Mardonius and his army cannot get omens to his liking from the sacrifices. Otherwise you would have fought long before this. Now, however, it is his purpose to pay no heed to the sacrifices, and to attack at the first glimmer of dawn, for he fears, as I surmise, that your numbers will become still greater. Therefore, I urge you to prepare, and if (as may be) Mardonius should delay and not attack, wait patiently where you are; for he has but a few days' provisions left. If, however, this war ends as you wish, then must you take thought how to save me too from slavery, who have done so desperate a deed as this for the sake of Hellas in my desire to declare to you Mardonius' intent so that the barbarians may not attack you suddenly before you yet expect them. I who speak am Alexander the Macedonian.

I was privileged, whilst this horrible battle was proceeding, to have a talk with one of Haig's most prominent military advisers, who afterwards owned that he had no idea of the conditions under which the battle was fought. I entreated him once more to reconsider the prospects of this venture in the light of what had actually happened. But he also was imbued with the relentlessness of his Chief. He treated me as a stupid civilian who knew nothing of war. When I alluded to the terrible casualties, he reminded me in Hotspur strain that you could not expect to make war without death and wounds. When I pointed to the wet season which had soaked the ground and made it unfit for the passage of tanks, artillery, or men, he said: Battles could not be stopped like tennis matches for a shower. Here again was Mars, but, I thought, Mars under an umbrella.

A big man on a horse scared me out of my wits.
He bellowed, "I'm General Genghis Kahn Schmitz.
There's a war going on! And it's time that you knew
Every lad in this land has his duty to do.
We're marching to battle. We need you, my boy!
We're about to attack. We're about to destroy
The Perilous Poozer of Pompelmoose Pass!
So get into line. You're a Private, First Class."

Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, "Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton".

I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably. But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of war and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words...less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the war that came before.

The CO walked in, said his name was Capt. Lawrence Madill, that our company was to be first wave in the invasion, that 30-percent casualties were expected, and that we were them!” Parley commented, “It saddened me to think of what would happen to some of my fellow GIs.

Later in 1776, Paine accompanied the Continental army in its retreat from New Jersey to Philadelphia. During this time, Paine began a new series of pamphlets. Eventually, these sixteen pamphlets became The American Crisis. In them, Paine comments on the American war effort and urges the colonists to keep fighting. This pamphlet, the first in the series, is perhaps the most famous. The pamphlet was read to George Washington’s troops in December 1776. Days later, these same troops crossed the Delaware River and attacked the British encampment in Trenton, New Jersey. The pamphlet opens with a familiar line: “These are the times that try men’s souls.

The precise reason for Hitchens’ theft and publication of my private mail is that I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having “threatened to wipe Israel off the map.” I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel’s Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people. But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.” It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: "Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!" Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: "'Fore God I am no coward; But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?"

“Look, Chief—is it really necessary to kill everybody here? I don’t relish it.”
“Don’t get chicken, son,” admonished Ardmore with an edge in his voice. “This is war—and war is no joke. There is no such thing as a humane war.”