Non Combatants Quotes & Sayings

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

It would be easy to define terrorism as attacks against human rights and international humanitarian law forbids attacks against innocent non-combatants which is often the definition used for terrorism. — Joichi Ito

Language is a powerful thing, and it changes the way we view ourselves, and other people, in delightful and horrifying ways. Anyone with any knowledge of the military, or who pays attention to how the media talks about war, has likely caught on to this.
We don't kill "people." We kill "targets." (Or japs or gooks or ragheads). We don't kill "fifteen year old boys" but "enemy combatants" (yes, every boy 15 and over killed in drone strikes now is automatically listed as an enemy combatant. Not a boy. Not a child.). — Kameron Hurley

In the future, we should anticipate seeing more hybrid wars where conventional warfare, irregular warfare, asymmetric warfare, and information warfare all blend together, creating a very complex and challenging situation to the combatants; therefore it will require military forces to posses hybrid capabilities, which might help deal with hybrid threats. — Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono

When you have warfare, things happen; people suffer; the noncombatants suffer as well as the combatants. And so it happens in civil war. — Emmeline Pankhurst

No war ought ever to be undertaken but under circumstances which render all intercourse of courtesy between the combatants impossible. It is a bad thing that men should hate each other; but it is far worse that they should contract the habit of cutting one another's throats without hatred. War is never lenient but where it is wanton; when men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge: this may be bad; but it is human nature. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. — Satoshi Kanazawa

We are told of the time when, with the same beliefs, with the same institutions, all the world seemed happy: why complain of these beliefs; why banish these institutions? We are slow to admit that that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the principle of evil which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and gods, the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm themselves, and slay and exterminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by the vast depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of the combatants. So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its ancestors, and to change the laws framed by the founders of communities, and confirmed by the faithful observance of the ages. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

There was tactical significance: stop the railroads. An excellent maneuver, no doubt, but the technique was horrible. The planes started kicking high-explosives and incendiaries through their bomb-bays at the city limits, and for all the pattern their hits presented, they must have been briefed by a Ouija board. Tabulate the loss against the gain. Over one hundred thousand non-combatants and a magnificent city destroyed by bombs dropped wide of the stated objectives: the railroads were knocked out for roughly two days. — Kurt Vonnegut

Swapping Bergdahl for illegal enemy combatants (terrorists, in common parlance) signaled unmistakably to Taliban and al Qaeda that Obama is determined to withdraw from Afghanistan no matter what the cost to the United States or those in Afghanistan fighting to remain free. — John Bolton

In the beginning, the U.S. government was happy with its secret operations, since it thought it had managed to gather all the evils of the world in GTMO, and had circumvented U.S. law and international treaties so that it could perform its revenge. But then it realized, after a lot of painful work, that it had gathered a bunch of non-combatants. Now the U.S. government is stuck with the problem, but it is not willing to be forthcoming and disclose the truth about the whole operation. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

We are cast as combatants in the war between truth and error. There is no middle ground. We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own and for the people who hold them. — Dallin H. Oaks

It's necessary that everyone does his duty and works in his place - devotes himself to constructing a body of fundamental values - against the common enemy - in a network of active, supple, inderdependent, and confederated resistance - present on every front, at the level of Europe - with the aim of concentrating all the energies of the combatants. — Guillaume Faye

Do not give the terrorists, the enemy combatants, the people who blow up folks at weddings, who fly airplanes into the twin towers, the ability to sue our own troops all over the country for any and everything. — Lindsey Graham

Islamic terrorism is not common crime but an act of war. Jihad is war. For the Jihadi it is a war; we must also accept it as such. Home grown Muslim militants must be treated, not just as enemy combatants but as traitors. — Ali Sina

In the glare, the great and terrible light of this happening, God seems to signal that the story of the rest of us need not end, and that the new light can prove a troubled dawn.
For the rest of us, perhaps. Not for the dead, not for the more than fifty million real dead in the world's worst catastrophe: victors and vanquished, combatants and civilians, people of so many nations, men, women, and children, all cut down. For them there can be no new earthly dawn. Yet thought their bones like in the darkness of the grave, they will not have died in vain, if their remembrance can lead us from the long, long time of war to the time for peace. — Herman Wouk

The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It doesn't separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. He also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That's why the Olympic Flame should never die. — Adolf Hitler

Hamas hides among unwitting civilians, who have no way of controlling its activities. This fact does not give Israel the right to kill innocent non-combatants, not even unintentionally. Besides, murder is not 'unintentional' when you know it is inevitable. — Ilana Mercer

The problem of evil is raised more often by spectators of life than the actual combatants. You will hardly ever find that the great sufferers are the great skeptics. — James Stewart

Lord, we live in a world where violence thrives and the plight of the innocent is often overlooked. Precious peace making Father teach us love instead of hate. For those in conflicts and those fleeing, especially non-combatants, we cry out to you. Protect them Lord. Turn the violent and the evil doers who oppress them to love and non-violence we pray. Turn the hearts of humanity towards thee and thy son, the Prince of Peace, and thy gospel of love. Amen. — David Holdsworth

Then they will fornicate in my name and slay their children [ ... ] in my name, and your star will rule over the thirteenth aeon." And after that Jesus laughed. Judas said, "Master, why are you laughing at us?" Jesus answered and said, "I am not laughing at you but at the error of the stars, because these six stars wander about with these five combatants, and they all will be destroyed along with their creatures. — Rodolphe Kasser

Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Conservatives believe in providing Constitutional rights to our citizens, not to enemy combatants like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. — Mitt Romney

To the non-combatants and those on the periphery of action, the war meant only boredom or occasional excitement, but to those who entered the meat grinder itself the war was a netherworld of horror from which escape seemed less and less likely as casualties mounted and the fighting dragged on and on. Time had no meaning, life had no meaning. The fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of Peleliu had eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all. — Eugene B. Sledge

It is not only more bloody and more murderous than any previous wars but also more cruel, more relentless, more pitiless ... It discards all the parameters to which we defer in times of peace and which we called the rights of man. It does not recognise the privileges of the wounded man or of the doctor and it does not distinguish between non-combatants and the fighting part of the population. — Max Hastings

There will come a moment when social chains will wound almost no one, lacking people sufficiently enamored of independence and sufficiently individualized to feel these chains and suffer from them. Lacking combatants, the combat will come to an end. The small independent minority will become increasingly small.

But however small it might be, it will suffer from the increased social pressure. It will represent, in this time of almost perfect conformism and generalized social contentment, pessimism and individualism. — Georges Palante

In Sherman's famous march through Georgia, his soldiers left a swath of death and destruction, destroying crops, burning homes and killing civilians. Sherman himself acknowledged that only 20% of the destruction inflicted by his invasion was inflicted on military objectives. Civilian non-combatants, essentially innocents, suffered 80% of the losses. — John Pugsley

The statistics of suicide show that, for non-combatants at least, life is more interesting in war than in peace. — William Ralph Inge

war historian Paul Fussell suggests that in World War II heavy drinking was the answer to fear, boredom and the terrible damage to the sense of identity experienced by so many combatants. Drunkenness, he writes, did for the men of this war what drugs did for the next generation in Vietnam. — Liz Byrski

Peace is not just a colored ribbon. It's more than a wristband or a t-shirt. It's not just a donation or a 5 K race. It's not just a folk song, or a white dove. And peace is certainly more than a celebrity endorsement. Peace is a fulltime job. It's protecting civilians, overseeing elections, and disarming ex-combatants. The UN has over 100,000 Peacekeepers on the ground, in places others can't or won't go, doing things others can't or won't do. Peace, like war, must be waged. — George Clooney

During the Civil War, traumatized combatants developed a condition that they called "soldier's heart."8 The violence that results in soldier's heart shatters a person's sense of self and community, and war is not the only setting in which violence is done: violence is done whenever we violate another's integrity. Thus we do violence in politics when we demonize the opposition or ignore urgent human needs in favor of politically expedient decisions. — Parker J. Palmer

It was so obvious to him that war between nation states was unnecessary, and therefore deeply stupid, that he found it hard to believe that anything could explain it other than a passion for destruction and a desire by the combatants to inflict suffering on others at no matter what price in suffering for themselves. — Bertrand Russell

War has often been called a game, with good reason. Both have combatants. Both have sides. Both carry the risk of losing. — Samantha Shannon

We are ending where the savages began. We have found again the lost arts of starving non-combatants, burning hovels, and leading away the vanquished into slavery. Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: we are our own Huns. — Bertrand De Jouvenel

Governments predicate the call for war upon very terrible lies: that it will restrain evil men, make honest and courageous men out of boys, and the outcome depends upon the moral virtuousness of the combatants. Warfare is obscene, an evil waste of life, and a destroyer of civilization. Society can salvage no virtue or rectitude from the larger waste of destroying cities and killing people. There is no moral message deduced from warfare. All warfare is barbaric and inhuman. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Patriotism is the primary moral armor of our ground combatants. — Dick Couch

Without me to struggle against, without the constant chaos of our first growing season, without the pressure of our impending wedding, he seemed to have found his own steady rhythm. I worked my way into it, looking for the harmony this time, instead of conflict. We found easy joy in working together, becoming real partners, instead of combatants, for the first time. — Kristin Kimball

While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the conventions, they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war. — John Yoo

I did a lot of reading of first person accounts from Koreans and combatants and aid workers. And I spoke to relatives. A lot of wonderful photographs were made available to me from that period - 1950-1956 - and those were given to me by a Korean newspaper in Seoul. Ruined villages, refugees streaming through a river valley, GI's and orphans and orphanages, those tiny details that you can only see in a picture. — Chang-rae Lee

This stuff on enemy combatants, the Bush Administration has fought like a tiger to avoid having to produce any evidence to a judge to show why somebody is locked up in perpetuity. Another example of that is the torture scandal. — James Bovard

Planning a wedding is hell. Things are said. Doors are slammed. Quarrels about the most inconsequential things
yellow tablecloths or white? hors d'oeuvres set out on tables or passed around on trays?
are often pitched at such a level that it seems the combatants may never recover from them. Much of the anxiety, of course, is tribal. It is wrenching to have to open the sacred circle to admit an outsider. — Caitlin Flanagan

Peace is a fulltime job. It's protecting civilians, overseeing elections, and disarming ex-combatants. Peace, like war, must be waged. — George Clooney

We find it difficult to distinguish between spiritual combatants ... and their hostages. — Russell D. Moore

It is a rule of international law that weapons and methods of warfare which do not discriminate between combatants and civilians should never be used. — Sean MacBride

Wars about trifles are always bitter, especially among neighbours. When the differences are great, and the parties comparative strangers, men quarrel with courtesy. What combatants are ever so eager as two brothers? — Anthony Trollope

No combatants are so unequally matched as when one is shackled with error, while the other rejoices in the self-demonstrability of truth. — Horace Mann

You know, I need hardly remind you, it is not numbers or strength that gives victory in war; but, heaven helping them, to one or other of two combatants it is given to dash with stouter hearts to meet the foe, and such onset, in nine cases out of ten, those others refuse to meet. — Xenophon

The great concern is that year after year, rising numbers of journalists are being killed in pursuit of their work. They are increasingly seen as not being neutral but rather as combatants by one side or the other. — Salman Rushdie

Even a believer in nonviolence has to say between two combatants which is less bad or whose cause is just. — Mahatma Gandhi

Since the dawn of time, warring combatants have regularly reached for what support they could find to nerve their own side for battle. — Mark A. Noll