Civilians Quotes - Page 13

• On Syria, it's clear that the indiscriminate attacks on civilians by the [Bashar] Assad regime and Russia will only worsen the humanitarian catastrophe and that a negotiated end to the conflict is the only way to achieve lasting peace in Syria.

  Barack Obama

  Russia, Way, Conflict

  Source: time.com

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• You cannot use [nuclear weapons] to target civilians; you cannot use them against military targets if they have indiscriminate effects on civilians in addition to the attack on the military target.

  John Burroughs

  Military, Nuclear, Target

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• There is no effort to acknowledge some equivalent accountability by associating "terrorism" with all violence that is deliberately aimed at civilians, either directly or as foreseeable effects of violent acts, whether the actor is a non-state individual or group or the state.

  Richard A. Falk

  Violent Acts, Effort, Accountability

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out.

  Robert Graves

  Cutting, Fit, Trenches

  Robert Graves (1980). “Good-Bye to All That: With a Prologue and an Epilogue”, Octagon Press, Limited

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• There is no precedent of a civilian population, displaced by a war that their leadership started and lost, claiming a right to return to territory that they failed to conquer.

  Caroline Glick

  War, Population, Territory

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• A system in which legal police shootings of unarmed civilians are a common occurrence is a system that has some serious flaws. In this case, the drawback is a straightforward consequence of America's approach to firearms. A well-armed citizenry required an even-better-armed constabulary. Widespread gun ownership creates a systematic climate of fear on the part of the police. The result is a quantity of police shootings that, regardless of the facts of any particular case, is just staggeringly high. Young black men, in particular, are paying the price for America's gun culture.

  Matthew Yglesias

  Gun, Men, America

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• "Peace" is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence-unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. But, if there ever was a time in history when "peace" meant that there was no fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Peace, Military, War

  "Starship Troopers". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, 1959.

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• How much atonement is enough? The bombing must be allowed as at least part-payment: those of our young people who are concerned about the moral problem posed by the Allied air offensive should at least consider the moral problem that would have been posed if the German civilian population had not suffered at all.

  Clive James

  Peace, War, Air

  Clive James (1985). “Flying Visits”

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• Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We send home that first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.

  Marie Colvin

  War, Home, Differences

  "Marie Colvin: 'Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice'" by Marie Colvin, www.theguardian.com. February 22, 2012.

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• I would wager that the number of civilians that were killed [in] a typical week under Saddam Hussein was probably more than we killed during the weeks we were at war there.

  Bill Maher

  War, Numbers, Typical

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• So far, the official definitions of terrorism have the role of demonizing the enemies of the United States and Israel, and of sanitizing recourse to indiscriminate force by both governments that causes widespread death of innocent civilians. This double standard is built around the current way in which the vocabulary of terrorism is being used in this country.

  Richard A. Falk

  Country, Vocabulary, Government

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The cost of an on-site inspection team would be minuscule compared to war, Saddam would have no choice except to comply, the results would be certain, military and civilian casualties would be avoided, there would be almost unanimous worldwide support, and the United States could regain its leadership in combating the real threat of international terrorism.

  Jimmy Carter

  Military, Real, War

  "Carter: Iraq threat does not justify war", www.cnn.com. January 31, 2003.

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• A large portion of American citizens, especially people of color, have lost confidence in our criminal justice system. Many have called for appointing special prosecutors when a police officer kills or injures a civilian. If you were elected president, would you publicly support special prosecutors in these cases and what is one other thing you would do to fix our broken justice system?

  Russell Simmons

  Color, Broken, Justice

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• Iraq is a strange country. Where else can American civilians like me be protected by terrorist human shields?

  Michael Totten

  Country, Iraq, Shields

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• The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship. Any explanation that fixes culpability on individuals is insufficient. No one leader, civilian or military, caused failure in Vietnam or Iraq. Different military and civilian leaders in the two conflicts produced similar results. In both conflicts, the general officer corps designed to advise policymakers, prepare forces and conduct operations failed to perform its intended functions.

  Paul Yingling

  Military, Two, Iraq

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• Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending in among women and children. I heard they were making statements that they were proud of losing fewer armed men than civilians. It's hard to see how they could be proud of such a situation.

  Jan Egeland

  Children, Men, Hezbollah

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• The din of politicians speechifying about the war, the faux moral posturing of opinion-makers who claim to speak in the name of 'the troops,' everything that Iraq has come to represent in the American imagination - it all melts away in the 115-degree heat. What's left is the machinery of a war that, having been called into being by civilians, no longer bears a relation to anything they say.

  Lawrence Kaplan

  War, Names, Iraq

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• More than ever before, crisis management, reconstruction and development demand a new level of cooperation between nations, and between nations and international organisations, where military and civilian instruments are applied in a coordinated way.

  Jaap de Hoop Scheffer

  Military, Development, Levels

  Speech at NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Madeira, www.nato.int. May 25, 2007.

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• I happen to believe that certain types of assault weapons, which are manufactured and designed for military purposes to kill people very quickly should not be used in civilian society.

  Bernie Sanders

  Military, Believe, Assault Weapons

  "Bernie Sanders on politics, Clinton and guns". Interview with Dan Roberts, www.theguardian.com. December 18, 2015.

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• With a civilian target, female bombers tend to be more successful and cause more damage.

  Mia Bloom

  Successful, Female, Bombers

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Looked at objectively, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths resulting from political violence are produced by what should be understood as "state terror." Terrorism also serves as an excuse to avoid diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflict.

  Richard A. Falk

  Political, Peaceful, Majority

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Al Qaeda is not a nation-state and it has not signed the Geneva Conventions. It shows no desire to obey the laws of war; if anything it directly violates them by disguising themselves as civilians and attacking purely civilian targets to cause massive casualties.

  John Yoo

  War, Law, Desire

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Unlike previous wars, our enemy now is a stateless network of religious extremists. They do not obey the laws of war, they hide among peaceful populations and launch surprise attacks on civilians. They have no armed forces per se, no territory or citizens to defend and no fear of dying during their attacks. Information is our primary weapon against this enemy, and intelligence gathered from captured operatives is perhaps the most effective means of preventing future attacks.

  John Yoo

  Religious, War, Mean

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• And there's this talk that we're asking soldiers to make the greatest sacrifice, but the reality is that civilians bear the burden of war more than the combatants. You're much more likely to get accidentally blown up or killed by a death squad than you are to die in a firefight.

  Michael Hastings

  War, Sacrifice, Reality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Iraq has been successfully demonized as if everybody who lives there is Saddam Hussein. In the build-up to this attack on Iraq, journalists have almost universally excluded the prospect of civilian deaths, the numbers of people who would die, because those people don't matter.

  John Pilger

  Iraq, Numbers, People

  Source: progressive.org

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