militarism

It is a pervasive condition of empires that they affect great swathes of the planet without the empire's populace being aware of that impact - indeed without being aware that many of the affected places even exist. How many Americans are are of the continuing socioenvironmental fallout from U.S. militarism and foreign policy decisions made three or four decades ago in, say, Angola or Laos? How many could even place those nation-states on a map?

This is why militarism is a feminist issue, why rape is an environmental issue, why environmental destruction is a peace issue.

The passion for war is so intense that there is no undertaking so mad, or so injurious to the welfare of the State, that a man does not consider himself honored in defending it, at the risk of his life.

Flacks for both war-obsessed governments immediately blamed the other side for the deaths of the civilians.

If you want peace, prepare for ideological war with those who want others to prepare for physical war.

No man can be a Christian and a soldier at the same time, for the two ideas are wholly incompatible.

You are wrong,_ says the man. His voice is low and resonant. The metal walls of the dome, all the knives and swords and spears, all seem to vibrate with each of his words. __our rulers and their propaganda have sold you this watered-down conceit of war, of a warrior yoked to the whims of civilization. Yet for all their self-professed civility, your rulers will gladly spend a soldier__ life to better aid their posturing, to keep the cost of a crude good low. They will send the children of others off to die and only think upon it later to grandly and loudly memorialize them, lauding their great sacrifice. Civilization is but the adoption of this cowardly method of murder.

Yet I now ask of you__re you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?

We could see in our own country as late as the 1960's and 1970's how good Christian and Jewish men, the pillars of our society, when they acceded to political and military power, could sit calmly and cooly in their air-conditioned offices in Washington and cold-bloodedly, without a qualm or a moral quiver, plan and order the massacre of hundred of thousands of men, women and children and the destruction of their homes, farms, churches, schools and hospitals in a faraway Asian land of poor peasants who had never threatened us in the slightest, who were incapable of it. Almost as savage was the acceptance by most of us citizens of such barbarism, until, toward the end, our slumbering - or should one say, cowardly? - consciences were aroused.

When we comprehend how few wars have ever been fought for the sake of justice or the people; how personal spite, the ambition of military professionals, and the protection of capitalistic ventures are the real moving powers...then the mythology of war will no longer bring us to our knees.

The entire stock of relationships which suited in war__ilitiae__as regarded as inadmissible and improper in peace__omi. We have the measure of how right the Romans were in this respect in the experience of the intellectual and moral impoverishment brought about by total mobilisation.

What does the corpse care who was right and who was wrong?

Arms control is by definition a rejection of disarmament.

Militarism has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations. The single art of war makes progress at the expense of all the arts of peace.

Max had to think about these new developments. He hadn't liked getting hit by a rock--his stomach still ached from then rock Judith had thrown--but then again, when his team had used rocks on Alexander, it had caused him to surrender. Now the Bad Guys only had three soldiers left, which would make victory for Max's team more likely. So now it made perfect sense. He was wrong to ban rocks, or even animals. The key was to use all the weapons at one's disposal, but to just make sure you won when you used them.

The greatest threat to peace is the barrage of rightist propaganda portraying war as decent, honorable, and patriotic.

War grows out of ordinary human nature.

Maybe he hadn't thought the war through. It had seemed like simple fun when he had first pictured it, with a glorious beginning, a difficult but valor-filled middle, and a victorious end. He hadn't accounted for the fact that there might not be much of a resolution to the battle, and he hadn't imagined what it would feel like when the war just sort of ended, without anyone admitting defeat and congratulating him for his bravery.