Military Quotes - page 30
The reason that Syria is facing this crisis is not because of any bad thing which Syria has done or any weaknesses within its democracy, or within its economy, or within its human rights record - and there are weaknesses in all three of these. The reason why Syria is being threatened is not because of anything bad which she did, but because of the good which she is doing. That's the reason why Syria is being threatened - because she will not betray the Palestinian resistance, because she will not betray the Lebanese resistance, Hizbullah, because she will not sign a shameful surrender-peace with General Sharon, and above all - more than any of these others - because Syria will not allow her country to be used as a military base for America to crush the resistance in Iraq. These are the reasons why Syria is being targeted by these imperial powers.
George Galloway
An essential element in forming a single electorate is the sense that in the last resort all parts of it stand, or fall, survive or perish, together. This sense the British do not share with the inhabitants of the continent of Western Europe. Of all the nations of Europe Britain and Russia alone, though for opposite reasons, have this in common: they can be defeated in the decisive land battle and still survive. This characteristic Russia owes to her immensity. Britain owes it to her ditch. The British feel – and I believe that instinct corresponds with sound military reason – that the ditch is as significant in what we call the nuclear age as it proved to be in the air age and had been in the age of the Grande Armée of Napoleon or the Spanish infantry of Philip II. Error or truth, myth or reality, the belief itself is a habit of mind which has helped to form the national identity of the British and cannot be divorced from it.
Enoch Powell
I do not believe that the loyalty of those many who over those 270 years, and particularly in this century, worked together and died together as part of the union under the Crown, was to the Crown quite simply, even though they wore the Crown on their uniforms and many of them wore it on their hearts. They were not the mercenaries of a Habsburg empire bound together by personal union and dynastic marriages; they were not the servants of a Hohenzollern empire imposed by military force. It was the Crown of the United Kingdom in parliament which was the centre of loyalty, as it is the essential unifying element of this realm, in the name of which and under the inspiration of which men and women these 270 years have worked and lived and died together.
Enoch Powell
Never was the military spirit half so rampant in this country since 1815 as at the present time. Look at the news from Rangoon...This makes 5400 persons killed by our ships in the East during the last five years, without our having lost one man by the butcheries. Now give me Free Trade as the recognized policy of all parties in this country, and I will find the best possible argument against these marauding atrocities.
Richard Cobden
There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,-a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country.
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
So far as it goes, the distinction, between an atrocity and an act of war is valid. An atrocity means an act of terrorism which has no genuine military purpose. One must accept such distinctions if one accepts war at all, which in practice everyone does. Nevertheless, a world in which it is wrong to murder an individual and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this planet of hours is not a loony-bin made use of by some other planet.
George Orwell
Censorship...ought to be confined to the temporary suppression of military and naval news which might assist the enemy. ... Public opinion might be fallible, but it was not half as fallible as individual opinion, and, good or bad, the Government had to lean upon it; how could they do that unless public opinion had full, free, and correct information as to facts?
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
Can we, however, expect that the Soviet Union will come out of the coming great war without defeat? To this frankly posed question, we will answer as frankly: If the war should remain only a war, the defeat of the Soviet Union would be inevitable. In a technical, economic, and military sense, imperialism in incomparably more strong. If it is not paralyzed by revolution in the West, imperialism will sweep away the regime which issued from the October revolution.
Leon Trotsky
This book was written in 1920 in the car of a military train and amid the flames of the civil war. The circumstance the reader must keep before his eyes if he wishes rightly to understand not only the basic material of the book, but also its harsh allusion, and particularly the tone in which it is written.
Leon Trotsky
It's now plain for the world to see how the supreme leader and his fellow power-hungry, mid-level clerics have been abusing the peoples' faith to maintain the big lie that they derive their legitimacy from Islam. Gone is the delusion that one man, Mr. Khamenei, can appropriate the powers of state in the name of God. So the supreme leader has lost his theocratic claim to legitimacy just as his favorite president has lost his claim to popular legitimacy. Because many in the armed forces and Revolutionary Guards are followers of religious leaders who question Mr. Khamenei, he cannot even count on presiding over a typical military dictatorship for long.
Reza Pahlavi
I don't think anyone in their right mind thinks you could stop the regime from developing nuclear weapons... What you would do is delay it but then give the regime the scope to retaliate. This would be poison. The cost would be huge for the people of Iran. Instead of bringing the state to the point of an uncontrolled explosion with no plan in mind, there is a better alternative... We propose a national congress that clearly sets out our proposals for changing the regime... You can support this, or try your chances with military action without a clear idea of the outcome.
Reza Pahlavi
The international community invested much effort and hope in the Reformists, but they're pre-screened, pre-approved loyal opposition. More and more of their supporters are realizing it's futile to promote change from within because Iran's paramilitary mafia still occupy the top of the pyramid. Khamenei controls every apparatus of state: legislature, politics, information and military.
Reza Pahlavi
The regime plays on the nationalistic argument of Iran's sovereign right to the technology. They need to be reminded that Iran had that right before they came to power. As a matter a fact, it is their behavior which is the cause for Iran today to be denied the privilege. For a regime that has violated just about any international charter and regulations, they cannot invoke the NPT only when it suits their purpose, and violate it by the same token when it does not. But let us understand the ultimate logic behind the regime's quest for the bomb. Be it via manufacturing or acquisition, the clerical regime views the bomb as its key to survival. Why? Because it will serve as a counterweight to the inferiority of its conventional military capabilities against the West. Under a nuclear umbrella, the regime would be able to continue its support of terrorism, undermine the region, holding it hostage with the ultimate goal to institutionalize itself.
Reza Pahlavi
I have vociferously rejected and expressed my opposition to any kind of military action against my homeland! There is a much better way – far less costly and more legitimate – to put an end to the principal source of militancy in our region: Supporting the people of Iran, as the most natural ally to the free world in their quest to rid themselves of the clerical regime. A combination of domestic pressure coupled with a cohesive international economic and diplomatic pressure will enable the people of Iran, an "army in place,” to rid themselves of the regime. It however very much concerns me that due to the mounting domestic problems the regime is faced with, it may in fact invite and seek such a confrontation.
Reza Pahlavi
Under the pressure of a war to the death, all that was best, all that was most human and gentle on each side was crushed out by military necessity. On the one side, the passion for a unified world, where every individual should live a free and full life in service of the world community, was overcome by the passion to punish spies, traitors, and heretics. On the other, vague and sadly misguided yearnings for a nobler, less materialistic life were cleverly transformed by the reactionary leaders into vindictiveness against the revolutionaries.
Olaf Stapledon
The Chinese are a great nation, incapable of permanent suppression by foreigners. They will not consent to adopt our vices in order to acquire military strength; but they are willing to adopt our virtues in order to advance in wisdom. I think they are the only people in the world who quite genuinely believe that wisdom is more precious than rubies. That is why the West regards them as uncivilized.
Bertrand Russell
