The War On Drugs Quotes

The war on drugs thrives on ignorance of drugs and misplaced faith in the power of the law to regulate human vice. ~ Tom Feiling

Just as Hitler used the Reichstag burning, the U.S. government now uses the so-called two wars, the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, to fuel fear in the population and establish a police security state. ~ Ralph Metzner

While there is widespread recognition that the War on Drugs is racist and that politicians have refused to invest in jobs or schools in their communities, parents of offenders and ex-offenders still feel intense shame - shame that their children have turned to crime despite the lack of obvious alternatives. One mother of an incarcerated teen, Constance, described her angst this way: "Regardless of what you feel like you've done for your kid, it still comes back on you, and you feel like, 'Well, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I messed up. You know, maybe if I had a did it this way, then it wouldn't a happened that way.'" After her son's arrest, she could not bring herself to tell friends and relatives and kept the family's suffering private. Constance is not alone. ~ Michelle Alexander

I believe that the war on drugs is a tragically misplaced use of resources - an immoral venture that produces far more suffering than it alleviates. ~ David Harsanyi

The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country. ~ Elliott Abrams

Drug use is a primordial animal activity. Among humans , it is immemorial and nearly universal. VVhat then accounts for the 'war on drugs ~ Anonymous

The temptation is to insist that black men 'choose' to be criminals; the system does not make them criminals, at least not in the way that slavery made blacks slaves or Jim Crow made them second-class citizens. The myth of choice here is seductive, but it should be resisted. African Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell prohibited drugs than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher rates for precisely the same conduct. In fact, studies suggest that white professionals may be the most likely of any group to have engaged in illegal drug activity in their lifetime, yet they are the least likely to be made criminals. The prevalence of illegal drug activity among all racial and ethnic groups creates a situation in which, due to limited law enforcement resources and political constraints, some people are made criminals while others are not. Black people have been made criminals by the War on Drugs to a degree that dwarfs its effect on other racial and ethnic groups, especially whites. And the process of making them criminals has produced racial stigma. ~ Michelle Alexander

Drugs flow as effortlessly through the harbour as through los esteros, but the government and the DEA view drug trafficking as more of a hazard to society when it moves through the poor area, with its dirty waters and seeming chaos, than when it has to do with corporate boardrooms and the main harbour. And for the FARC, it is becoming easier and easier to convince the city's Afro-Colombian majority that the focus of the war on drugs is not primarily on the flow of drugs, but on what kind of people are involved in it. ~ Magnus Linton

We won't win until the average parent believes drug reform protects kids better than the war on drugs. ~ Ethan Nadelmann

The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis. ~ Rhys Ifans

While we have driven out other Nazi verbal monstrosities, the terminology of the war on drugs has lingered. It's no longer a matter of Jews - the dangerous dealers are now said to be part of different cultural circles. ~ Norman Ohler

The opposite of addiction is human connection. And I think that has massive implications for the war on drugs. The treatment of drug addicts almost everywhere in the world is much closer to Tent City than it is to anything in Portugal. Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It's actually going to deepen it. ~ Johann Hari

The war on drugs is a war against the communities. ~ Holly Near

The enduring racial isolation of the ghetto poor has made them uniquely vulnerable in the War on Drugs. What happens to them does not directly affect - and is scarcely noticed by - the privileged beyond the ghetto's invisible walls. ~ Michelle Alexander

Although a million black men can be found in prisons and jails, public acknowledgment of the role of the criminal justice system in "disappearing" black men is surprisingly rare. ... Hundreds of thousands of black men are unable to be good fathers for their children, not because of a lack of commitment or desire but because they are warehoused in prisons, locked in cages. They did not walk out on their families voluntarily; they were taken away in handcuffs, often due to a massive federal program known as the War on Drugs. ~ Michelle Alexander

The War on Drugs and the War on Homelessness are on a collision course that no one in the media or in public life are willing to acknowledge. Ostensibly aimed at decreasing the use of illegal drugs, the War on Drugs succeeds only in increasing homelessness. ~ Thomas Szasz

Art can't decide whether the War on Drugs is an obscene absurdity or an absurd obscenity. In either case, it's a tragic, bloody farce. ~ Don Winslow

Although crack cocaine had not yet hit the streets when the War on Drugs was declared in 1982, its appearance a few years later created the perfect opportunity for the Reagan administration to build support for its new war. Drug use, once considered a private, public-health matter, was reframed through political rhetoric and media imagery as a grave threat to the national order. ~ Michelle Alexander

At a time when the current and two former US presidents have admittedly indulged, as have politicians of all stripes from Al Gore to Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and over 50% of the adult US population, the credibility tipping point of the War on Drugs propaganda has long been passed. All that appears to be missing is the political courage to admit failure and move on to more realistic and efficient policies. What will it take for decision makers to display the wisdom and garner the courage to end the disastrous War on Drugs and responsibly take charge of drug production and trade instead of leaving it in the hands of extremely dangerous and powerful international criminal organizations? ~ Jeffrey Dhywood

The growing policy-reform movement is a broad church. It includes everyone from ganja-smoking Rastafarians to free-market fundamentalists and all in between. There are socialists who think the drug war hurts the poor, capitalists who see a business opportunity, liberals who defend the right to choose, and fiscal conservatives who complain America is spending $40 billion a year on the War on Drugs rather than making a few billion taxing it. The movement can't agree on much other than that the present policy doesn't work. People disagree on whether legalized drugs should be controlled by the state, by corporations, by small businessmen, or by grow-your-own farmers, and on whether they should be advertised, taxed, or just handed out free in white boxes to addicts. ~ Ioan Grillo

What's on the outside to prevent their return? They are now convicted felons, a branding they will never be able to shake. The odds were stacked against them to begin with, and now that they're tagged as felons, life in the free world is somehow supposed to improve? These are the real casualties of our wars. The war on drugs. The war on crime. Unintended victims of tough laws passed by tough politicians over the past forty years. One million young black men now warehoused in decaying prisons, idling away the days at taxpayer expense. Our prisons are packed. Our streets are filled with drugs. Who's winning the war? ~ John Grisham

The war on drugs is really the war on people who buy drugs from people who don't lobby the government. ~ Stefan Molyneux

While many have depicted the War on Drugs as a Republican initiative, the drug war was a bipartisan effort. This rhetoric of law and
order deployed by politicians won elections nationwide, from races for local council seats to the presidency. ~ Dominique DuBois Gilliard

Look at all the drug busts all over the country. There must be an audience there somewhere. My feeling is that if we're losing the war on drugs, let's do a movie for the enemy. ~ Tommy Chong

No-knock police raids destroy Americans' right to privacy and safety. People's lives are being ruined or ended as a result of unsubstantiated assertions by anonymous government informants ... Unfortunately, no-knock raids are becoming more common as federal, state, and local politicians and law enforcement agencies decide that the war on drugs justified nullifying the Fourth Amendment ... No-knock raids in response to alleged narcotics violations presume that the government should have practically unlimited power to endanger some people's lives in order to control what others ingest. ~ James Bovard

Before the war on drugs, the war on terror, or the war on cancer, there was the war on female sexual desire. It's a war that has been raging far longer than any other, and its victims number well into the billions by now. Like the others, it's a war that can never be won, as the declared enemy is a force of nature. We may as well declare war on the cycles of the moon. ~ Christopher Ryan

Right here, in this same headquarters, 52 years ago, the Convention that gave the birth certificate to the war on drugs was approved ~ Juan Manuel Santos

The first casualty of war is truth, and the war on drugs is no different ~ Dominic Milton Trott

The War on Drugs, from the Hastings-facing window of the Portland
Hotel, is manifested in the pregnant Celia kneeling on the sidewalk,
handcuffed wrists behind her back, eyes cast on the ground. There
was no Detective-Sergeant Gillespie to protect her when, as a little
girl, she was raped by her stepfather and subjected to the nocturnal
spitting ritual, so in the War on Drugs she has become one of the
enemy. ~ Gabor Mate

Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs ~ Michelle Alexander

The line in the sand that Carter drew along Iran's Zagros Mountains now stretches from Central Asia through the Middle East and across the width of Africa. That the ongoing enterprise may someday end - that U.S. troops will finally depart - appears so unlikely as to make the prospect unworthy of discussion. Like the war on drugs or the war on poverty, the War for the Greater Middle East has become a permanent fixture in American life and is accepted as such. ~ Andrew J. Bacevich

Because of the war on drugs, pain patients are treated with skepticism and pain doctors live in fear of being prosecuted for overprescribing. The end result is that addicts still get their opioids without much trouble, while genuine patients often can't find treatment. Those who do must typically be tracked in a database and must schedule frequent, expensive doctor visits for surveillance like urine testing. ~ Maia Szalavitz

To understand the future course of this war, one need only look at the history of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. Like those two manufactured "wars", this one will be never-ending, freedom-destroying, counterproductive, and ultimately understood to have caused far more damage than the supposed threat it was aimed at ever could have. ~ Ramez Naam

Media censorship is a prohibition of words and pictures. The war on drugs is a complete failure, and so is the American war on words. When you forbid a word, you give it power. Self-proclaimed rebels will use words like shit or fuck, simply to shock and sound cool. ~ Oliver Markus

The war on drugs is what makes thugs. ~ John McWhorter

I actually took them all on quite handily, although I learned when I came to study the issue that I was completely wrong. I also came to believe that the war on drugs is one of the last vestiges of institutionalized racism in our society. ~ Harvey Pekar

I think it is now widely understood that the so-called "War on Drugs" has largely been a failure. Too many people have developed criminal records for smoking marijuana. Too many people have gone to jail for nonviolent crimes. So I think it's important for us to rethink the war on drugs. ~ Bernie Sanders

The war on drugs is really no war at all - it's a business! ~ Jerry Brown

[T]ake the war on drugs. The average American says, "The war on drugs has been beneficial." The rest of us see reality. This war has destroyed thousands of Americans. It is also a pretext for government agents to rob innocent people in airports and on the highways - they seize and confiscate large amounts of cash and say to their victims: "Sue us if you don't like it." And more and more judges, politicians, intelligence agents, and law-enforcement officers are on the take - as dependent on the drug-war largess as the drug lords themselves. ~ Jacob G. Hornberger

But anyone who believes in the war on drugs is missing a crucial point as to why the war can never be won. Feeling good will never go out of style. ~ Ryan Vanderford

That's what I hate about the war on drugs. All day long we see those commercials: "Here's your brain, here's your brain on drugs", "Just Say No", "Why do you think they call it dope?" ... And
then the next commercial is [singing] "This Bud's for yooouuuu." C'mon, everybody, let's be hypocritical bastards. It's okay to drink your drug. We meant those other drugs. Those untaxed
drugs. Those are the ones that are bad for you. ~ Bill Hicks

The war on drugs to me is absolutely phoney, its so obviously phoney, ok? It's a war against our civil rights, that's all it is. They're using it to make us afraid to go out at night, afraid of each other, so that we lock ourselves in our homes and they get suspending our rights one by one. ~ Bill Hicks

The war on drugs has failed in West Africa and around the world ~ Kofi Annan

Too many Americans have lost faith in our approach to the war on drugs ... ~ Gary Johnson

I was trying in 'The Power of the Dog' to write a brutally accurate in-your-face, if you will, description of 30 years in the war on drugs. And the effect that that had on people. ~ Don Winslow

We are losing the 'War on Drugs,' which means there's a war going on and people on drugs are winning it. ~ Bill Hicks

It's not the drug that causes the junkie it's the laws that causes the junkie because of course the drug laws means that he can't go and get help because he is afraid of being arrested. He also can't have a normal life because the war on drugs has made drugs so expensive and has made drug contracts unenforceable which means they can only be enforced through criminal violence.

It becomes so profitable to sell drugs to addicts that the drug dealers have every incentive to get people addicted by offering free samples and to concentrate their drug to the highest possible dose to provoke the greatest amount of addiction as possible.

Overall it is a completely staggering and completely satanic human calamity. It is the new gulag and in some ways much more brutal than the soviet gulag. In the soviet gulags there was not a huge prison rape problem and in this situation your life could be destroyed through no fault of your own through sometimes, no involvement of your own and the people who end up in the drug culture are walled off and separated as a whole and thrown into this demonic, incredibly dangerous, underworld were the quality of the drugs can't be verified. Were contracts can't be enforced except through breaking peoples kneecaps and the price of drugs would often led them to a life of crime.

People say "well, I became a drug addict and I lost my house, family, and my job and all that." It's not because you became a drug addict but, because t ~ Stefan Molyneux

life in the free world is somehow supposed to improve? These are the real casualties of our wars. The war on drugs. The war on crime. Unintended victims of tough laws passed by tough politicians over the past forty years. One million young black men now warehoused in decaying prisons, idling away the days at taxpayer expense. ~ John Grisham

The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism. ~ Michelle Alexander

Do we expect minority officers, whose livelihood depends on the very departments charged with waging the war, to play the role of peacenik? That expectation seems unreasonable, yet the dilemma for racial justice advocates is a real one. The quiet complicity of minority officers in the War on Drugs serves to legitimate the system and insulate it from critique. In a nation still stuck in an old Jim Crow mindset - which equates racism with white bigotry and views racial diversity as proof the problem has been solved - a racially diverse police department invites questions like: 'How can you say the Oakland Police Department's drug raids are racist? There's a black police chief, and most of the officers involved in the drug raids are black.' If the caste dimensions of mass incarceration were better understood and the limitations of cosmetic diversity were better appreciated, the existence of black police chiefs and black officers would be no more encouraging today than the presence of black slave drivers and black plantation owners hundreds of years ago. ~ Michelle Alexander

Just plain logic says that the war on drugs does not work. It absolutely does not work. We have this highly addictive legal drug called tobacco which has never resulted in people being sent to prison, but there has been a massive reduction in its consumption simply because responsible adults looking at their own bodies have said they don't want to do that to themselves. ~ Graham Hancock

If you support the war on drugs in its present form, then you're only paying lip-service to the defense of freedom, and you don't really grasp the concept of the sovereign individual human being. ~ Neal Boortz

Truth is the first casualty of war and the war on drugs is no different. Every day both the print and broadcast media bombard the public with a perspective and narrative which has proved to be devastating. This diet of cultural influence and propaganda is unremitting. ~ Dominic Milton Trott

Why are drugs so profitable? Essentially, many argue, it's because they are illegal. By making drugs a criminal enterprise, it creates an enormous black market economy where drugs fetch far greater prices than they would if legal. ~ James Morcan

The War on Drugs has failed, but it's worse than that. It is actively harming our society. Violent crime is thriving in the shadows to which the drug trade has been consigned. People who genuinely need help can't get it. Neither can people who need medical marijuana to treat terrible diseases. We are spending billions, filling up our prisons with non-violent offenders and sacrificing our liberties. ~ Sting

The war on drugs was an ideology the government came up with, and there never really was a war on drugs. I mean, to stop the importation of drugs into the United States of America is an impossibility. ~ George Jung

Over the course of the 1970s conservatives made the endangered child into a kind of political and rhetorical abstraction, a way of thinking about the country and its citizens that could help advance a wide range of policy initiatives. They opposed the counterculture on the grounds that rock and roll caused adolescents to lose respect for family life. They promoted the War on Drugs with racially tinged morality tales about addicted inner-city mothers and, crucially, the "superpredator" "crack babies" to whom those mothers supposedly gave birth. (That particular epidemic was later shown to be a myth.)40 And when Anita Bryant led a campaign to allow Dade County to discriminate against homosexuals in hiring teachers for public schools, she named the effort "Save Our Children." The fear that tied all of these campaigns together was of the ease with which children could be victimized or else corrupted and turned against the society that was supposed to nurture them. ~ Richard Beck

MANO: There's no question in my mind that we've always felt, in the heart of our Western, Christian culture, that Jesus was very much female. That is why the representations of Jesus with long hair have always been predominant in art. The Virgin Mary was later presented as a harmless sort of woman to whom we can address our need for a maternal outlet in prayer, as a safer way of dealing with the fact that Jesus was as much a woman as a man, particularly when he died.

DOOR: You said that if men don't overcome their wanting of women, society will crack.
MANO: We are coming to a point where the genders are clumsily engaging in civil war with each other. There's a lot of unpleasantness in the land. Men feel terribly threatened. Women have been crucified for many years, so they understand it and have their axes to grind as well. The truth of the matter is, Jesus on the cross is the female being exploited in every which way. I mentioned intercourse being, at its best, an act of penetration, but there are many other ways in which women have been sacrificed, whether from childbirth or being sold as wives or whatever, through history. So when the male S&M devotee binds a woman to a cross, he has to realize, if he's a Christian--

DOOR: Uh, just how many Christian S&M devotees are there?
MANO: Even if he's not a Christian, he ought to realize that he is essentially binding Jesus again, because Jesus contains in him the female--very, very strongly- ~ D. Keith Mano

There is a war going on out there, and it's only worth waking to the dying night if you are prepared to be utterly ruthless'; a war - he kept scanning the rooftops - where everything is engaged in a conflict that has no rules; a war in which one side must continually besiege the other, in which to aim at anything but victory was pointless. It was a struggle in which the only power to remain standing was that which looked for no reasons, which was content to accept that the whole thing should remain without an explanation, because - and here he remembered The Prince's advice - it simply didn't exist... ~ Laszlo Krasznahorkai

There are no good wars or bad wars. The only thing bad about a war is to lose it. All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both sides. But only the victor's Cause becomes history's Noble Cause. It's not a matter of who is right or who is wrong, it's a matter of who has the best generals and the better army! ~ Charles Bukowski

Why is it when you fall in love with someone (and especially when you are trying extremely hard not to do so), the world seems to conspire against you in order to cause that person to be the only thing on your mind? It doesn't matter what you're doing: reading, driving, walking down the road. You just look up and, BANG, there is their name or some form of it. Then you smile, and you think of them. That's when you realize there isn't any way to get out of this one alive and unscathed, because it's already a battle that you've lost, and the war is going to rage on forever after. ~ Jennifer Megan Varnadore

There Will Come Soft Rains
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone. ~ Sara Teasdale

Once, back home, I decided to count how many days out of my twenty months in Afghanistan I'd been on combat missions. 217 days. And I'm still paying the price for every one of those days. ~ Vladislav Tamarov

The French Foreign Office, wishful to allay the anger of the Parisian mob clamouring for war with England, secured this admirable couple and sent them round the town. You cannot be amused at a thing, and at the same time want to kill it. The French nation saw the English citizen and citizeness - no caricature, but the living reality - and their indignation exploded in laughter. The success of the stratagem prompted them later on to offer their services to the German Government, with the beneficial results that we all know. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

She ran a streak of foundation under each eye, highlighter down the bridge of her nose, and bronzer beneath each cheekbone - a layer of armor before battle. Because that's what these parties were to her, a war on all the heartbreaking boys in the San Francisco Bay Area. ~ Jessica Taylor

It's a civil war, and Arjuna knows a lot of people who are on the opposite side of the battlefield - they've been his friends. ~ Frederick Lenz

See the man they are fitting into the bottom slot. He is coughing badly. No, not pneumonia. Not tuberculosis. Nothing so picturesque. Gently, gently, stretcher-bearers… he is about done. He is coughing up clots of pinky-green filth. Only his lungs, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawington. He is coughing well to-night. That is gas. You've heard of gas. Haven't you? It burns and shrivels the lungs to… to the mess you see on the ambulance floor there. He's about the age of Bertie, Mother. Not unlike Bertie, either, with his gentle brown eyes and fair curly hair. Bertie would look up pleading like that in between coughing up his lungs… The son you have so generously given to the War. Cough, cough, little fair-haired boy. Perhaps somewhere your mother is thinking of you… boasting of the life she has so nobly given… the life you thought was your own, but which is hers to squander as she thinks fit. 'My boy is not a slacker, thank God.' Cough away, little boy, cough away. What does it matter, providing your mother doesn't have to face the shame of her son's cowardice? ~ Helen Zenna Smith

shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ass
shot like a flower in the dance

amazing how death wins hands down
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of
life

amazing how laughter has been drowned out
amazing how viciousness is such a constant

I must soon declare my own war on their war
I must hold to my last piece of ground
I must protect the small space I have made that has
allowed me life

my life not their death
my death not their death

this place, this time, now
I vow to the sun
that I will laugh the good laugh once again
in the perfect place of me
forever.

their death not my life. ~ Charles Bukowski

On a distant hilltop, twinkling like an early evening star, a white light was flashing.
Blouse lowered his telescope. 'They're repeating "CQ",' he said. 'And I believe those longer pauses are when they're aiming their tube in different directions. They're looking for their spies. "Seek You", see? Private Igor?'
'Thur?'
'You know how that tube works, don't you?'
'Oh, yeth, thur. You jutht light a flare in the box, and then it'th just point and click.'
'You're not going to answer it, are you, sir?' said Jackrum, horrified.
'I am indeed, sergeant,' said Blouse briskly. 'Private Carborundum, please assemble the tube. Manickle, please bring the lantern. I shall need to read the code book.'
'But that'll give away our position!' said Jackrum.
'No, sergeant, because although this term may be unfamiliar to you I intend to what we call "lie",' said Blouse. 'Igor, I'm sure you have some scissors, although I'd rather you didn't attempt to repeat the word.'
'I have thome of the appliantheth you mention, thur,' said Igorina stiffly. ~ Terry Pratchett

We study the glory of God, and the honour and liberty of parliament, for which we unanimously fight, without seeking our own interests ... I profess I could never satisfy myself on the justness of this war, but from the authority of the parliament to maintain itself in its rights; and in this cause I hope to prove myself an honest man and single-hearted. ~ Oliver Cromwell

The propaganda system allows the U.S. Ieadership to commit crimes without limit and with no suggestion of misbehavior or criminality; in fact, major war criminals like Henry Kissinger appear regularly on TV to comment on the crimes of the derivative butchers. ~ Edward S. Herman

The purpose of all of this (left hemisphere's way of choosing denial or repression over considering an anomaly) is to impose stability on behavior and to prevent vacillation because indecisiveness doesn't serve any purpose. Any decision, so long as it is probably correct, is better than no decision at all. A perpetually fickle general will never win a war. ~ V.S. Ramachandran

Death, whether it regards ourselves or others, appears less terrible in war than at home. The cries of women and children, friends in anguish, a dark room, dim tapers, priests and physicians, are what affect us the most on the death-bed. Behold us already more than half dead and buried. ~ Henry Home, Lord Kames

The initial months of the war had left Barcelona plunged in a strange somnolence of fear and internal skirmishes. The fascist Rebellion had failed in Barcelona in the first few days after the coup, and there were those who wanted to believe that the war was now a distant event, that in the end it would be seen as just one more piece of bravado from generals with little stature and even less shame. In a matter of weeks, they said, everything would return to the feverish abnormality that characterize the countries public life . . . He knew that a civil war is never just one fight, but a tangle of large or small fights bound to one another. It's official memory is always established by chroniclers and trench on the winning or the losing side, but it is never the story of those who are trapped between the two, those who seldom set the bonfire alight...[He] used to say that in Spain and opponent may be scorned, but anyone who does things his own way and refuses to swallow what he doesn't agree with is hated. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I did exactly what you told me to do, Nick. Didn't you tell me to just write the stupid book already? And that even doing the worst thing on the planet had to count for something? Well I can't think of anything worse than what I'm about to do, which is why I think you deserve an explanation. And maybe after you read it you'll realize why I don't have the hope that you have. The truth is this: We begin and end alone. ~ Matthew J. Hefti

I understood why war zones are called 'theaters' because they frame a kind of play acting or, worse, deceit, that can stain a human life forever: the deceit of hate on hearsay - hating an enemy one doesn't know ... ~ Gretel Ehrlich

In November 2004, U.S. occupation forces launched their second major attack on the city of Falluja. The press reported major war crimes instantly, with approval. ~ Noam Chomsky

A Christian state should be established [in Lebanon], with its southern border on the Litani river. We will make an alliance with it. When we smash the Arab Legion's strength and bomb Amman, we will eliminate Transjordan too, and then Syria will fall. If Egypt still dares to fight on, we shall bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo ... And in this fashion, we will end the war and settle our forefathers' account with Egypt, Assyria, and Aram. ~ David Ben-Gurion

The cable is evidence of a widespread US policy during the occupation of shooting first and asking questions later, as well as detaining anyone and everyone "suspected" of having any links to attacks on US forces. ~ Dahr Jamail

But all these hints at foreseeing what actually did happen on the French as well as on the Russian side are only conspicuous now because the event has justified them. If the event had not come to pass, these hints would have been forgotten, as thousands and millions of suggestions and supposition are now forgotten that were current at the period, but have been shown by time to be unfounded and so have been consigned to oblivion. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The next morning, on the way to school in Peter's car, I steal a look at his profile. "I like how you're so smooth," I say. "Like a baby."
"I could grow a beard if I wanted to," he says, touching his chin. "A thick one."
Fondly I say, "No, you couldn't. But maybe one day, when you're a man."
He frowns. "I am a man. I'm eighteen!"
I scoff, "You don't even pack your own lunches. Do you even know how to do laundry?"
"I'm a man in all the ways that count," he boasts, and I roll my eyes.
"What would you do if you were drafted to go to war?" I ask.
"Uh…aren't college kids given a pass on that? Does the draft even still exist?"
I don't know the answers to either of these questions, so I barrel forward. "What would you do if I got pregnant right now?"
"Lara Jean, we're not even having sex. That would be the immaculate conception."
"If we were?" I press.
He groans. "You and your questions! ~ Jenny Han

I grew up in a family full of strong women. A great aunt on my mother's side had been a matron on a hospital ship in World War II, and one on my father's side had served in the Women's Royal Naval Service. ~ Nick Earls

Despite recent German setbacks on the battlefield, the Wolf still has hope that his plans for global domination will yet be realized. His greatest goal is the eradication of the Jewish people, with whom he is obsessed, despite not having had any intentional contact with a Jew in twenty years. "This war can end two ways," he said in a January 30, 1942, address to the German parliament. "Either the extermination of the Aryan peoples or the disappearance of Jewry from Europe." Prior ~ Bill O'Reilly

No one person is the cause for or consequence of all that happens. I am just the tenth man, the threshold, the turn in the tide. I stand here on the shoulders of humanity, a mere instrument of Time.
– Govinda Shauri ~ Krishna Udayasankar

In addition to the alienation of farmers, large parts of the Mittelstand, growing numbers of industrialists and of the nationalist right by 1928, there was a further worrying trend facing the regime, the progressive disillusionment of young people and of the literary and cultural elites. The First World War and its aftermath had shaken loose many of the traditional ties binding young people to their families and to their local communities. As the Koblenz authorities noted in the early 1920s, 'the present sad appearance of the young, their debasement on the steeets, in pubs and dance halls results from the absence of firm authority by fathers and by schools during the war. The children of that time are today s young people who have little sense of authority and discipline.' In Cologne, it was observed that young people were spending too much time on 'visits to pubs, excessive drinking and dancing'. As ~ Ruth Henig

White Americans have contented themselves with gestures that are now described as "tokenism".

For hard example, white Americans congratulate themselves on the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in the schools; they suppose, in spite of the mountain of evidence that has since accumulated to the contrary, that this was proof of a change of heart – or, as they like to say, progress. Perhaps. It all depends on how one reads the word "progress".

Most of the Negroes I know do not believe that this immense concession would ever have been made if it had not been for the competition of the Cold War, and the fact that Africa was clearly liberating herself and therefore had, for political reasons, to be wooed by the descendants of her former masters. Had it been a matter of love or justice, the 1954 decision would surely have occurred sooner; were it not for the realities of power in this difficult era, it might very well not have occurred yet. ~ James Baldwin

The modern assault on the environment began about 50 years ago, during and immediately after World War II. ~ Barry Commoner

The world is shaped by mankind's desires and fears. A war of hope against dread, waged upon a substrate that man himself made malleable though he has long forgotten how. All men and all men's works stand on feet of clay, waiting to be formed and reformed, forged by fear into monsters from the dark core of each soul, waiting to rend the world asunder. ~ Mark Lawrence

So we can do a better job of homeland security. I can do a better job of waging a smarter, more effective war on terror and guarantee that we will go after the terrorists. I will hunt them down, and we'll kill them, we'll capture them. We'll do whatever is necessary to be safe. ~ John F. Kerry