Civilians Quotes - Page 9

I think you also understand that one of the key things that's got to be done in Iraq is to build a mentality of understanding that the military needs to be subordinate to civilian control and respectful of its own people.

John Abizaid

Military, Thinking, Keys

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I am the first Egyptian civilian president elected democratically, freely, following a great, peaceful revolution.

Mohammed Morsi

Peaceful, President, Firsts

"Mohamed Morsi, in UN speech, calls for action on Syria, Palestinian cause " by Priyanka Boghani, www.pri.org. September 26, 2012.

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In this age, I don't care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony - even vicious harmony - on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines.

James Mattis

Military, Home, Enemy

James Mattis' speech at the US Joint Forces Command Conference, May 2010.

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Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough. He's in a position either to kill or not to kill, and he's made the decision to kill.

Daniel Ellsberg

Men, Hands, Choices

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It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble - whether instituting open housing, civilian compliant review boards, or sex education programs - when they presume that a reform is an inevitable comcomitant of progress. It is then they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues.

Rick Perlstein

Sex, Mean, Top Down

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As long as the enemy fights he must be beaten relentlessly, but a defeated enemy and especially the civilian population must be treated generously.

Alexander Suvorov

Fighting, Long, Enemy

"Yesterday and Today, 1917-1967: Contemporaries Report on the Progress of German Soviet Friendship". Published by Verlag Zeit im Bild and Agentsvo pechati "Novosti", 1967.

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The destruction of civilian hamlets, the killing and the wounding of civilians, became vastly greater than it had been before, and it was very upsetting; but I still couldnt bring myself to understand that the policy itself was wrong.

Neil Sheehan

Upset, Killing, Destruction

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There is no moral equivalency between those who would kill using children, innocent civilians, children and adults, in their homes and in their places of worship, to that of a government that is seeking those terrorists before they can engage in that awful activity.

George Pataki

Children, Home, Government

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Drone strikes, Albert Camus would argue, are not just meant to kill. They are programmed to terrorize. In this regard, whether the missile strikes its intended target or incinerates a goat-herder and his flock is incidental. In fact, the occasional killing of civilians may well be a desired outcome since collateral deaths intensify the fear. This is punishment by example, not for any particular crime or impending threat, but merely because of who you are, where you live, what you might believe. These new circuitries of death are meant to humiliate, subdue and dehumanize.

Jeffrey St. Clair

Believe, Punishment, Drones

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It appears that legal positions that you have supported have been used by the administration, the military, and the CIA to justify torture and Geneva Convention violations by military and civilian personnel.

Edward Kennedy

Military, Administration, Used

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Unprovoked attacks on Israel's borders, murdering Israeli soldiers, taking Israeli hostages and showering rockets targeting and killing Israeli civilians are not furthering any legitimate goal.

Alcee Hastings

Israel, Goal, Soldier

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For decades, the violence in the Middle East has claimed a multitude of innocent civilian victims: Men, women and children, Arab and Israeli.

John Conyers

Children, Men, Middle East

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If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.

Peter King

Military, Blame, Ifs

"For Lawmaker Examining Terror, a Pro-I.R.A. Past" by Scott Shane, www.nytimes.com. March 8, 2011.

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There is one unalterable difference between a soldier and a civilian: the civilian never does more than he is paid to do.

Erwin Rommel

Differences, Soldier, Doe

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It is of first importance that the military be subordinate to civilian government

John Rawls

Military, Government, Firsts

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We are battling fanatics who kidnap and behead civilians and shoot fleeing children in the back. There can be no dialogue with such people, and the American people understand this.

Kay Bailey Hutchison

Children, People, Fleeing

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So, before leading my troops into battle, we would get drunk and drugged up, sacrifice a local teenager, drink their blood, then strip down to our shoes and go into battle wearing colourful wigs and carrying dainty purses we'd looted from civilians. We'd slaughter anyone we saw, chop their heads off and use them as soccer balls. We were nude, fearless, drunk and homicidal. We killed hundreds of people - so many I lost count.

General Butt Naked

Soccer, Teenager, Sacrifice

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No one in the United States has become seriously ill or has died because of any kind of accident at a civilian nuclear power plant.

Joe Barton

Nuclear, United States, Kind

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All sorts of artillery installations, rockets and tank units that are firing on civilians in Kosovo should be neutralized. If that means air strikes, then NATO should carry out air strikes.

Fatos Nano

Mean, Air, Tanks

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Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.

Sean Penn

Sacrifice, Medicine, Soldier

Open Letter to the President George W. Bush, www.snopes.com. November 3, 2002.

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As a civilian during the Second War, I was exposed to danger in circumstances which removed any distinction between the man in and the man out of uniform.

Lester B. Pearson

War, Men, Uniforms

Lester B. Pearson (1964). “The Four Faces of Peace and the International Outlook: Statements”, McClelland and Stewart

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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is continually reviewing its safety plan for the 100-plus operating civilian nuclear reactors in the United States. And when those plants were put into operation, they were required to have double and triple redundant safety systems.

Joe Barton

Safety, Nuclear, United States

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Tonight, savagery in the streets of Iraq. Ten Americans die in a single day, four of them civilians murdered, mutilated and dragged through the streets....What drives American civilians to risk death in Iraq? In this economy it may be, for some, the only job they can find.

Dan Rather

Jobs, Iraq, Risk

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Al-Qa'ida does not follow a traditional command structure, wear uniforms, carry its arms openly, or mass its troops at the borders of the nations it attacks. Nonetheless, it possesses the demonstrated capability to strike with little notice and cause significant civilian or military casualties.

John O. Brennan

Military, Borders, Arms

"Strengthening our Security by Adhering to our Values and Laws". John O. Brennan's Speech at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. September 16, 2011.

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Unfortunately, in war, there are casualties, including among the civilian population.

John O. Brennan

War, Population, Casualties

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