Bombing Quotes - page 6
while here in the western hemisphere, we went in for precision bombing (what chance of precision bombing now?) while we went in for obliteration bombing, Russia was very careful not to bomb cities, to wipe out civilian populations. Perhaps she was thinking of the poor, of the workers, as brothers.
Dorothy Day
As a secular person, and as a woman, I've always been appalled by the Taliban regime and would dearly like to see them toppled. I was a public critic of the regime long before the war started. But I've been told that the Northern Alliance is absolutely no better when it comes to the issue of women. The crimes against women in Afghanistan are just unthinkable; there's never been anything like it in the history of the world. So of course I would love to see that government overthrown and something less appalling put in its place.
Do I think bombing is the way to do it? Of course I don't. It's not for me to speculate on this, but there are all sorts of realpolitik outcomes that one can imagine.
Susan Sontag
Western man has progressively accepted the use of violence during the years since the outbreak of the First World War. In that war the Germans began the practice of indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations of British cities. ...The peoples of the Allied world and of neutral countries were shocked and outraged by this evidence of German inhumanity and bestiality... the dropping of bombs on men, women and children sleeping peacefully in their beds in great cities. ...By the year 1945 most people of the United Nations were rejoicing over the winning of the war through the destruction from the air of numerous German and Japanese cities, and were revealing scarcely a qualm of conscience over this unequaled devastation and annihilation. The practice from which they had recoiled in horror less than three decades previously, they were now using with cold premeditation and concentrated skill. And nothing like the havoc they wrought had ever before been seen on this earth.
Kirby Page
In the past, the community of scholars has made it a custom to furnish scientific information to any person seriously seeking it. However, we must face these facts: The policy of the government itself during and after the war, say in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has made it clear that to provide scientific information is not a necessarily innocent act, and may entail the gravest consequences. One therefore cannot escape reconsidering the established custom of the scientist to give information to every person who may inquire of him.
Norbert Wiener
It's really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence. In a war, there are so many questionable things done. Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I believe that when you're in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war with a minimum loss of lives.
Mike Jones
Other multilateral organizations have spoken clearly as well. The G-8 has declared that all terrorist acts are criminal and must be universally condemned. And the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference recently spoke out against a suicide bombing, which he said runs counter to the teachings of Islam. The message behind these statements is resolutely clear. Like slavery and piracy, terrorism has no place in the modern world.
George W. Bush
I first became aware of this larger phenomenon in the wake of the bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City. In the days and weeks to follow, I got dozens of calls from the press asking me whether there was legislation pending to ban bomb information on the Net. [...] In reality, of course, the "Internet as threat" meme was generated and disseminated primarily by the press itself.
Mike Godwin
Capitalism's gratuitous wars and sanctioned greed have jeopardized the planet and filled it with refugees. Much of the blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of the government of the United States. Seventeen years after invading Afghanistan, after bombing it into the ‘stone age' with the sole aim of toppling the Taliban, the US government is back in talks with the very same Taliban. In the interim it has destroyed Iraq, Libya and Syria. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives to war and sanctions, a whole region has descended into chaos, ancient cities-pounded into dust. Amidst the desolation and the rubble, a monstrosity called Daesh (ISIS) has been spawned. It has spread across the world, indiscriminately murdering ordinary people who had absolutely nothing to do with America's wars. Over these last few years, given the wars it has waged, and the international treaties it has arbitrarily reneged on, the US Government perfectly fits its own definition of a rogue state.
Arundhati Roy
Suicide fucking bombing, there's a bright idea! Every time there's a bang, the world's a wanker short! Fucking idiots! I want to see the instructor: "Right, lads, I'm only going to show you this once..." Fucking pricks! And it depends on what newspaper you read, how many virgins you get for blowing yourself up. How are you gonna shag them when you're now flying mince?!
Billy Connolly
The increasing pressure to launch the ground war early was making me crazy. I could guess what was going on figured Cheney and Powell were caught in the middle. There had to be a contingent of hawks in Washington who did not want to stop until we'd punished Saddam. We'd been bombing Iraq for more than a month, but that wasn't good enough. These were guys who'd seen John Wayne in The Green Beret, they'd seen Rambo, they'd seen Patton, and it was easy for them to pound their desks and say, "By God, we've got to go in there and kick ass! Gotta punish that son of a bitch!" Of course, none of them was going to get shot at. None of them would have to answer to the mothers and fathers of dead soldiers and Marines.
Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.
How can assured destruction deter those who glorify self-destruction and call it martyrdom? Just as suicide bombing has changed domestic security policies, dealing with the nuclearization of this new kind of "other-worldly” state requires a different approach in international relations. Far from acting to avoid assured destruction, they invite it with tireless exaltation of martyrdom!
Reza Pahlavi
Hitchens: Let me ask a question to Mr. Heston. Can he tell me, clockwise, what countries have frontiers and borders with Iraq, starting from Kuwait?
Charlton Heston: Yes, indeed I can (...). Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, Russia ... uh, Iran.
Hitchens: Exactly. You don't know where it is, in other words, do you? You have no idea where the country is on the map, and you're in favour of bombing it now rather than later, on the whim of a president.
Bob Cain: Mr. Hitchens, if I may interject, I'm not sure [about the relevance] of the instantaneous command of the geography of a region.
Hitchens: Oh, I don't know. I think if you're in favour of bombing a country, you might pay it the compliment of knowing where it is.
Christopher Hitchens
Nixon feared for our alliances if America abdicated in Indochina; he was concerned about the impact on Soviet restraint if the United States simply abandoned what four administrations had affirmed, and he believed that a demonstration of American weakness in Asia would destroy the opening to China based in part on America's role in thwarting Soviet moves toward hegemony in Asia. But as he entered office, he found that by the end of the Johnson administration, the goal of victory had been abandoned and a commitment had been made to end the bombing of North Vietnam and to seek a negotiated compromise solution. These objectives had been affirmed by both candidates in the presidential campaign. No significant American political or intellectual leader opposed them. When a negotiated solution proved unattainable, Nixon proceeded unilaterally to implement his concept of an honorable withdrawal.
Henry Kissinger
For years the Dalai Lama was on the payroll of the CIA, an agency that has perpetrated killings against rebellious workers, peasants, students, and others in countries around the world. His eldest brother played an active role in a CIA-front group. Another brother established an intelligence operation with the CIA, which included a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet to foment insurgency. The Dalai Lama was no pacifist. He supported the U.S./NATO military intervention into Afghanistan, also the 78 days' bombing of Yugoslavia and the destruction of that country.
Michael Parenti
Let me tell you something. I've had enough of Irish Americans who haven't been back to their country in twenty or thirty years come up to me and talk about the resistance, the revolution back home; and the glory of the revolution, and the glory of dying for the revolution. Fuck the revolution! They don't talk about the glory of killing for the revolution. What's the glory of taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children? Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory of bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old-age-pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day? Where's the glory in that? To leave them dying, or crippled for life, or dead, under the rubble of the revolution that the majority of the people in my country don't want. No more! Sing No more!
Bono
Moral equivalence is a term of propaganda that was invented to try to prevent us from looking at the acts for which we are responsible. ...There is no such notion. There are many different dimensions and criteria. For example, there's no moral equivalence between the bombing of the World Trade Center and the destruction of Nicaragua or of El Salvador, of Guatemala. The latter were far worse, by any criterion. So there's no moral equivalence.
Noam Chomsky
