Quotes & Sayings About Politicians And War

War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics and of troops by politicians. — Chris Hedges

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 sepia tone of November has become blood-soaked with paper poppies festooning the lapels of our politicians, newsreaders and business leaders ... I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy. — Harry Leslie Smith

I don't believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago!. — Anne Frank

The central thesis of the American failure in Afghanistan - the one you'll hear from politicians and pundits and even scholars - was succinctly propounded by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: 'The war in Iraq drained resources from Afghanistan before things were under control'. — Anand Gopal

Something in me died at Peleliu. Perhaps it was the childish innocence that accepted as faith the claim that Man is basically good. Possibly I lost faith that politicians in high places, who do not have to endure war's savagery, will ever stop blundering and sending others to endure it. — Eugene B. Sledge

Right now we're in the middle of a cultural war between the Muslims and the Western world. The politicians get in the way, but if you put two people together in a room, they can talk it out and work it out, just like Anna and the King. — Sandy Duncan

Major international interventions are doomed unless the US is directly or indirectly involved. But if American politicians, officials and servicemen are to be put at risk of arrest and prosecution, the United States will be most reluctant to act in order to curb aggression or prevent genocide. So the effect of the court may well be to diminish, not increase, the numbers of (in the words of the UN Secretary General) 'innocents of distant wars and conflicts'. — Margaret Thatcher

No one made a decision to militarize the police in America. The change has come slowly, the result of a generation of politicians and public officials fanning and exploiting public fears by declaring war on abstractions like crime, drug use, and terrorism. The resulting policies have made those war metaphors increasingly real. — Radley Balko

Wars are fought by teenagers, you realize that. They really ought to be fought by the politicians and old people who start these wars. (Interview with Don Swaim of CBS Radio-1986) — James Clavell

When we go to war, our politicians will be guided by our popular will. And if we believe that torture 'got' bin Laden, then we will be more prone to accept the view that a good 'end' can justify brutal 'means.' — Alex Gibney

There seems to be a sense in the British media that prime ministers enjoy going to war. They do not. The decision to send British soldiers into battle is the worst and most stomach-churning senior politicians have to take. It makes them wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worrying if they have done the right thing. — Jonathan Powell

And I think, in the end, that is the best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die. — Robert Fisk

The War on Drugs employs millions - politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military - that probably couldn't find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners. — L. Neil Smith

While politicians contend, and men are swerved this way and that by conflicting tides of interest and passion, the great cause of human liberty is in the hands of one ... who shall not fail nor be discouraged ... — Harriet Beecher Stowe

It was a new kind of class war
the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector. — Irving Kristol

What's going on outside, Ravic?" "Nothing new, Kate. The world goes on eagerly preparing for suicide and at the same time deluding itself about what it's doing." "Will there be war?" "Everyone knows that there will be war. What one does not yet know is when. Everyone expects a miracle." Ravic smiled. "Never before have I seen so many politicians who believe in miracles as at present in France and England. And never so few as in Germany." She remained lying silent for a while. "To think that it should be possible - " she said then. "Yes - it seems so impossible that it will happen some day. Just because one considers it so impossible and doesn't protect oneself against it. — Erich Maria Remarque

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting. — Winston Churchill

We all accuse Vladimir Putin of Cold War nostalgia, but Washington's elites - politicians and intellectuals - miss the old days as well. They wish for the world in which the United States was utterly dominant over its friends, its foes were to be shunned entirely, and the challenges were stark, moral, and vital. Today's world is messy and complicated. China is one of our biggest trading partners and our looming geopolitical rival. Russia is a surly spoiler, but it has a globalized middle class and has created ties in Europe. — Fareed Zakaria

Political scientists after World War II hypothesized that even though the voices of individual Americans counted for little, most people belonged to a variety of interest groups and membership organizations - clubs, associations, political parties, unions - to which politicians were responsive. — Robert Reich

There's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is for ever, the embrace gets tighter and the toys cleverer with every generation, and there's no such thing for either side as enough security. Not for the main players, not for the nasty little newcomers who each year run themselves up a suitcase bomb and join the club. We get tired of believing that, because we're human. We may even con ourselves into believing the threat has gone away. It never will. Never, never, never."
"So, who'll save us then, Walt?" Barley asked. "You and Nedsky?"
"Vanity, if anything will, which I doubt," Walter retorted. "No leader wants to go down in history as the ass who destroyed his country in an afternoon. And funk, I suppose. Most of our gallant politicians do have a narcissistic objection to suicide, thank God. — John Le Carre

The reason the founders chafed at the idea of an American standing army and vested the power of war making in the cumbersome legislature was not to disadvantage us against future enemies, but to disincline us toward war as a general matter ... With citizen-soldiers, with the certainty of a vigorous political debate over the use of a military subject to politicians' control, the idea was for us to feel it- uncomfortably- every second we were at war. But after a generation or two of shedding the deliberate political encumbrances to war that they left us ... war making has become almost an autonomous function of the American state. It never stops. — Rachel Maddow

Chuchill has renounced all British interests in Europe and those of his people who are not blind now realise that the pretext for this war was far removed from the cause of it, namely, the subservience of the so-called democratic politicians to their Jewish masters. — William Joyce

In the '60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians, and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know? — Yoko Ono

As politicians weigh courses of action against their political agendas the death toll weighs heavy on the conscience of the world. The once vibrant Syrian streets are now haunted by the souls of the innocent and the historic monuments that told of an unrivalled Arab civilisation no longer stand tall. — Aysha Taryam

And just think, fellow Southrons, what kind of a Confederate nation we could have, if after independence, politicians abandoned equivocation and spoke honestly and firmly on all issues? If they were to do their duty to God, nation, and people, there would be virtually no need for any form of federal litigation. — Charley Reese

People whose lives were determined for them by a group of politicians whose severing, dissecting and reattaching of their lands has turned their world into a monster that not even its creator can control. — Aysha Taryam

I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless, robots who protect them and their property. — Assata Shakur

The boar held a VCR reote control and cackled maliciously as he watched a video of U.S. politicians grinning with their one-time budy Saddam
Dick Cheney, Gulf War-era Secretary of State James Baker, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, to the tune of "Taking Care of Business." And then the viewers saw themselves in a mirror emblazoned with the words "You are a witness. — Wafaa Bilal

And this is as good a picture as any of how counterculture communities like the Haight took care of the war's mangled souls: a doctor from a hippie clinic carrying a dying, emaciated soldier in his arms. For decades after the war, up to this very day, right-wing politicians and pundits have spread the libel about how peace activists and hippies greeted returning Vietnam vets with gobs of spit and contempt. — David Talbot

What southern whites further sought, and in a sense demanded, was respect. This the North provided after 1876 in paeans to the courage and dedication of soldiers on both sides. Resentment of northern power, the war's destruction, and Reconstruction continued to be strong in the South, and the work of white-supremacist politicians, army veterans, and southern women turned that resentment into a long-lasting ideology of the Lost Cause. Northerners, for their part, congratulated themselves on winning the war and freeing the slaves; they also took pleasure in feeling superior to the South for many generations, while industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and other social changes diverted much of their attention from wartime issues [184]. — Paul D. Escott

We have no control over the outcome of anything. Like the planet and global warming, we don't control that. If politicians want a war we don't control that. Acts of terrorism, we can't control them. — Will.i.am

Hitler's architect and later Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer. Speer had been imprisoned for his role in the use of slave labor during the war, but though he was found guilty for a number of crimes, and served nineteen years in prison, upon his release which was supported by such people as French president Charles DeGaulle and other high-ranking politicians, he was considered in many ways a "good German". He had admitted his guilt at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials after the war, and acknowledged that the crimes committed under Hitler would haunt Germany forever. He wrote his memoirs in prison and spoke not only about his complicity in the use of slave labor but also his attempts to thwart some of Hitler's more barbaric plans at the end of the war. Much of the proceeds from his bestselling memoirs went to Jewish organizations, though this was not discovered until after Speer had died. — Leonard Cooper

Modern war, modern international hostility is, I believe, possible only through the stupid illiteracy of the mass of men and the conceit and intellectual indolence of rulers and those who feed the public mind. — H.G.Wells

I am merely noting that the creation of native prostitutes to service foreign privates is an inevitable outcome of a war of occupation, one of those nasty little side effects of defending freedom that all the wives, sisters, girlfriends, mothers, pastors, and politicians in Smallville, USA, pretend to ignore behind waxed and buffed walls of teeth as they welcome their soldiers home, ready to treat any unmentionable afflictions with the penicillin of American goodness. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

And I would like current or future politicians to make sure every avenue of diplomacy, and what you have, are exhausted before sending young men and women off to death and serious injury. — Tomas Young

I suppose if we gain anything from this unsought experience it will be an appreciation for honesty- frankness on the part of our politicians, our friends, our loves, ourselves. No more liars in public places. (And the bed and the bar are, in their way, as public as the floor of Congress.) — Tim O'Brien

First, our enemies were the natives, then they were the Nazis, then after a while it was the communists. Finally, at the pinnacle of what we're calling civilization, our enemies are the Islamic terrorists. Our enemies seem to change over the course of history along with our ways of fighting them. But what hasn't changed is government profit; politicians and leaders seem to always be getting richer by the blood of our soldiers. Makes you wonder who the real enemy has been all this time. — Bruce Crown

everyone is lied to for his or her own good. A mother telling a child it will be okay. A lover telling a lover I will always love you. Politicians promising a better and brighter future. Generals and admirals insisting war begets peace. — Julia Fierro

Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The "D." or "R." after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him. — George Packer

Nuclear threats and nuclear weapons are the last argument of weak, stressed and irresponsible politicians. People must act very quicky to stop the movement to nuclear war. — Alla Yaroshinskaya

Twenty-two percent of Americans say their primary news source is Fox News. It's divided our country in a way that we haven't been divided probably since the Civil War, and its empowered large corporations to get certain kinds of politicians and ideologues who are in the United State Congress elected
the Tea Party ideologues who control the Republican Party. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The problems we face now - poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad - will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them in the first place. — Donald Trump

This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and wretchedness on a scale which no previous age could have dreaded or dreamed of. — A. N. Wilson

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

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

This sharp increase in the strength and reach of jihadist organizations in Syria and Iraq has generally been unacknowledged until recently by politicians and media in the West. A primary reason for this is that Western governments and their security forces narrowly define the jihadist threat as those forces directly controlled by al-Qaeda central or "core" al-Qaeda. This enables them to present a much more cheerful picture of their successes in the so-called "war on terror" than the situation on the ground warrants. — Patrick Cockburn

We [Americans] continue to be harangued by politicians about how Americans must fight this war because we're being attacked because we have freedoms and liberties and women in the workplace and a whole list of ephemera that have nothing to do with this war at all. — Michael Scheuer

I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder. — Harry Patch

Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view. — George Orwell

What led Germany to this strange pass was itself strange. After the war, many were happy to wipe away the old order and rid themselves of the kaiser. But when the old monarch at last left the palace, the people who had clamored for his exit were suddenly lost. They found themselves in the absurd position of the dog who, having caught the car he was so frantically chasing, has no idea what to do with it
so he looks about guiltily and then slinks away. Germany had no history of democracy and no idea how it worked, so the country broke apart into a riot of factions, with each faction blaming the others for everything that went wrong. This much they knew: under the kaiser there had been law and order and structure; now there was chaos. The kaiser had been the symbol of the nation; now there were only petty politicians. — Eric Metaxas

At the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is spoken here through her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics. — Asghar Farhadi

The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of politicians. — Arthur Miller

Delhi is not just a national capital, it is one of the political ultimates, one of the prime movers. It was born to power, war and glory. It rose to greatness not because holy men saw visions there but because it commanded the strategic routes from the northwest, where the conquerors came from, into the rich flatlands of the Ganges delta. Delhi is a soldiers' town, a politicians' town, journalists', diplomats' town. It is Asia's Washington, though not so picturesque, and lives by ambition, rivalry and opportunism. — Jan Morris

Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder. — Harry Patch

The reason the first three Star Wars movies were so terrific, and the second three sucked so bad, is actually very simple. The first three were about rebels, shooting guns and driving fast, and speaking with American accents. The second three were about politicians, discussing treaties and holding court, and speaking with British accents. — Bill Whittle

I am not anti-American,' he said. 'I just despise the current American administration. I despair that Bush has made ordinary, decent people all over the world think twice about what was once, and still could be again, a great country, when what happened on September 11th should have made ordinary, decent people all over the world embrace America as never before. I don't like it that neo-conservative politicians bully their so-called allies while playing to the worst, racist instincts of their own bewildered electorate. I don't like it that we live in an era where to be anti-war is to be anti-American, to be pro-Palestine is to be anti-Semitic, to be critical of Blair is somehow to be supportive of Putin and Chirac. All anybody is asking for in this so-called age of terror is some leadership. Yet everywhere you look in public life there is no truth, no courage, no dignity to speak of. — Charles Cumming

For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant. — David Baldacci

That's the problem with this whole country. Fucking vast prosperity. No one has any real problems anymore. Ninety percent of the damn politicians in this town either think there's no war on terror, or if we'd just be nice to these zealots they'll leave us alone. Well, that ain't going to fucking happen. The Huns are circling, and we're sitting around arguing about gay rights and prayer and guns and global warming and all kinds of bullshit. These idiots will eventually wake up to the threat, but by then it might be too late. (Stan Hurley) — Vince Flynn

All of the promises of politicians, generals, madmen, and crusaders that war can create peace have yet to be borne out. — Barbara Kingsolver

I swear if Washington moved any slower, we could be at war and it would all be over before they could even lift their sluggish, naked, dead asses off of their comfortable heated-seat toilets. -Fitzhugh to Captain Jeeter — Ray Palla

the ground.' In his war diaries he described the pandemonium that arose then among these experienced politicians from all parts of the political spectrum. 'Quite a number seemed to jump up from the table and come running to my chair, shouting and patting me on the back. There is no doubt that had I at this juncture faltered at all in the leading of the nation I should have been hurled out of office. I was sure that every minister was ready to be killed quite soon, and have all his family and possessions destroyed, rather than give in. — Geert Mak

Quite like religious fundamentalism, educational fundamentalism is based upon bookish creeds created by the self-proclaimed authority figures of the system. And this very fundamentalism is the cause of all the growing conflicts between the student-body of the education society and the teachers running that society. These conflicts further become tools of exploitation in the hands of a handful of war-mongering, authoritarian, blood-sucking politicians. — Abhijit Naskar

The Queen, watching from home, noted how the war began as a prodigiously popular thing; but this was the first war at which photographers, and a good war reporter (William Russell of The Times), had been present. When the inefficiency, and the sickness, and the sheer horror of the conflict became known, the public turned their wrath on the politicians. The — A. N. Wilson

They do not know what they say. If it came to a conflict of arms, the war will last at least four years. Northern politicians will not appreciate the determination and pluck of the South, and Southern politicians do not appreciate the numbers, resources, and patient perseverance of the North. Both sides forget that we are all Americans. I foresee that our country will pass through a terrible ordeal, a necessary expiation, perhaps, for our national sins. — Robert E.Lee

On the first of July, while Ariel sat on their blanket, gazing out at the sun-spangled water, Chyna tried to read a newspaper, but every story distressed her. War, rape, murder, robbery, politicians spewing hatred from all ends of the political spectrum. She read a movie review full of vicious ipse dixit criticism of the director and screenwriter, questioning their very right to create, and then turned to a woman columnist's equally vitriolic attack on a novelist, none of it genuine criticism, merely venom, and she threw the paper in a trash can. — Dean Koontz

The cold war provided the perfect excuse for Western governments to plunder and exploit the Third World in the name of freedom; to rig its elections, bribe its politicians, appoint its tyrants and, by every sophisticated means of persuasion and interference, stunt the emergence of young democracies in the name of democracy. — John Le Carre

War. The ultimate betrayal of tribe isn't acting competitively - that should be encouraged - but predicating your power on the excommunication of others from the group. That is exactly what politicians of both parties try to do when they spew venomous rhetoric about their rivals. That is exactly what media figures do when they go beyond criticism of their fellow citizens and openly revile them. Reviling people you share a combat outpost with is an incredibly stupid thing to do, and public figures who imagine their nation isn't, potentially, one huge combat outpost are deluding themselves. In — Sebastian Junger

Those who've left their bootprints in the trenches are those who value human life most. They get unwanted glimpses into the savage nature we really have underneath all the expensive clothes and moisturized skin. This of course, rules out the politicians, feminists, and liberals who are far too cozy hiding behind their daddies' wallets and sophomoric mentalities as those who feign having tasted the true consequence of a single blood-drop darkening the sand. — Bruce Crown

Have you ever noticed that the only metaphor we have in our public discourse for solving problems is to declare war on it? We have the war on crime, the war on
cancer, the war on drugs. But did you ever notice that we have no war on homelessness? You know why? Because there's no money in that problem. No money to be made off of the homeless. If you can find a solution to homelessness where the corporations and politicians can make a few million dollars each, you will see the streets of America begin to clear up pretty damn quick! — George Carlin

Srinagar is a medieval city dying in a modern war. It is empty streets, locked shops, angry soldiers and boys with stones. It is several thousand military bunkers, four golf courses, and three book-shops. It is wily politicians repeating their lies about war and peace to television cameras and small crowds gathered by the promise of an elusive job or a daily fee of a few hundred rupees. It is stopping at sidewalks and traffic lights when the convoys of rulers and their patrons in armored cars, secured by machine guns, rumble on broken roads. It is staring back or looking away, resigned. Srinagar is never winning and never being defeated. — Basharat Peer

Once brave politicians and others explain the war on drugs' true cost, the American people will scream for a cease-fire. Bring the troops home, people will urge. Treat drugs as a health problem, not as a matter for the criminal justice system. — Larry Elder

Drons change the way politicians think about war. You already have society's barriers against war dropping, and now you have a technology that takes the barriers to the ground. We can carry it out without having to deal with some of the consequences of sending our sons and daughters into harm's way. — P. W. Singer

Why do we use the term "greatest generation" for participants in war? Why not for those who have opposed war, who have tried to make us understand that war has never solved fundamental problems?

Should we not honor, instead of parachutists and bomber pilots, those conscientious objectors who refused to fight or the radicals and pacifists who opposed the idea that young people of one nation should kill young people of another nation to serve the purposes of politicians and financiers? — Howard Zinn

Lieutenants lied to captains, captains lied to colonels, colonels lied to generals, generals lied to politicians, politicians lied to the people. Right on up and down the line. It was like a complete and total, not a total lie, but just like so much, it was like PR, in other words it was like okay, we've got to sell the war to the American people. — Peter P. Mahoney

Why do you think politicians send soldiers to the wars they declare, if, of course, they still go to the bother of declaring them ... mediation, keeping a distance from the actual events and being privileged enough not to have to witness them. — Javier Marias

All problems, depressions, wars, disasters, assassinations, all of them were planned, caused, instigated, and implemented by the International Bankers and their attempt to establish a central bank in every country in the world, which they have now done, thanks to corrupt politicians who have been bought and paid for. This is all you need to know about the history of the world. — John F. Kennedy

I have never seen an adequate description anywhere of the amazement, the uncomprehending horror of the bulk of the American people which preceded the firing of that gun at Sumter. Politicians or far-sighted leaders on both sides knew what was coming. And it is they who have written histories of the war. But to the easy-going millions, busied with their farms or shops, the onrushing disaster was as inexplicable as an earthquake. Their protest arose from sea to sea like the clamor of a gigantic hive of frightened bees. — Rebecca Harding Davis

There are so few people left alive from back then, you may as well be talking to them about the Black Death. Nobody recalls the shite in the 30s and that were fucking horrible. For Christ's sake, nobody wants to remember the shite in the 80s. It's all forgotten and swept under the rug by the newspapers and the BBC. They get nostalgic about the music, but they never want to mention the misery. It's all shite. As for the bloody Second World War, the politicians only talk about it when they need an excuse to go pissing about in one of those fucking Muslim countries. — Harry Leslie Smith

I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and capitalists alone, are guilty of war. Oh no, the little man is just as guilty, otherwise the peoples of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! — Anne Frank

How did the American people ever reach this point where they believe that US aggression in the Middle East will make us safe when it does the opposite? How did the American people ever reach the point where they believe that fighting unconstitutional wars is required to protect our freedoms and our Constitution? Why do we allow the NSA, CIA, FBI, TSA, etc. to destroy our liberty at home, as part of the Global War on Terror, with a pretext that they are preserving our liberty? Why are the lying politicians reelected and allowed to bankrupt our country, destroy our money, and enter wars without the proper consent? Why do the American people suffer in silence and not scream "Enough is enough!"? We've had enough of the "humanitarian do-gooders" and the proponents of "American exceptionalism" who give us nothing but war, economic suffering, and less freedom. This can and must be stopped. — Ron Paul

Conservatives have long advanced the idea that our military can - and should - be used to shape foreign policy; our strength is the size and capacity of our military. They have advanced a retributive crime policy - punish the wrongdoers, no need to look at systemic causes of crime. The "war on terror" activates these deep frames, and politicians, the media, and the public continue to use the phrase because the conservative deep frames have become so pervasive. If — George Lakoff

Ask him about the cemeteries, Dean!"
In 1966 upon being told that President Charles DeGaulle had taken France out of NATO and that all U.S. troops must be evacuated off of French soil President Lyndon Johnson mentioned to Secretary of State Dean Rusk that he should ask DeGaulle about the Americans buried in France. Dean implied in his answer that that DeGaulle should not really be asked that in the meeting at which point President Johnson then told Secretary of State Dean Rusk:
"Ask him about the cemeteries Dean!"
That made it into a Presidential Order so he had to ask President DeGaulle.
So at end of the meeting Dean did ask DeGaulle if his order to remove all U.S. troops from French soil also included the 60,000+ soldiers buried in France from World War I and World War II.
DeGaulle, embarrassed, got up and left and never answered. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Let the politicians debate equal pay and pursue the folly of a war on women in America. — Brian Kilmeade

We are not taught to fear our politicians, who can debase our currency, throw us in prison and send us to war - but rather we are taught to fear each other. We are taught to imagine that the real predators in this world are not those who control prison cells, national debts and nuclear weapons, but rather our fellow citizens, who in the absence of brutal control would surely tear us apart! — Stefan Molyneux

We need to expose the motives of our political leaders, point out their connections to corporate power, show how huge profits are being made out of death and suffering. — Howard Zinn

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

As I looked at the stains on the coral, I recalled some of the eloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how "gallant" it is for a man to "shed his blood for his country," and "to give his life's blood as a sacrifice," and so on. The words seemed ridiculous. Only the flies benefited. — Eugene B. Sledge

At the front, people die for their mistakes. Why should politicians be more gently treated? They made the war. They deserve a dozen deaths, each of them. What can we try them for, except for treason, and how can you punish treason, except by death? — Hilary Mantel

[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

Most politicians - those people who live, eat and breathe politics - like to sit around and talk about politics and tell political war stories. Reagan didn't do that. His war stories were movie war stories and Hollywood war stories. He loved that. — Lyn Nofziger

You can't have Rosie on The View and Elton John packing Mom and Pop in at Caesars Palace and gay people all over television, and then have these politicians run out there with a straight face and say that gay and lesbian relationships are a threat to the family. We are winning in the culture - which is why we'll ultimately win the political war. — Dan Savage

The special skill of the politician consists in knowing what passions can be most easily aroused, and how to prevent them, when aroused, from being harmful to himself and his associates ... Moreover, since politicians are divided into rival groups, they aim at similarly dividing the nation, unless they have the good fortune to unite it in war against some other nation. — Bertrand Russell

We shouldn't have politicians micromanaging this war because it is complex and unconventional. — Bill Shuster

When you educate yourself about clitoredectomies, infibulation, forced prostitution, rape as a war tactic, patriarchal religions, women painters, filmmakers, poets, writers, activists, politicians, sex-industry workers, historians, archelogoists and musicians, that's self-protection. — Inga Muscio

There still is a war on women in terms of politicians in Washington and the state legislatures trying to eliminate any rights we have fought to win and that the Supreme Court has afforded us. — Gloria Allred

THE CAUSE of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true. — Ulysses S. Grant

In our society cultural analysts speak of the "politics of envy," where politicians, for their own interests, stir up strife among people to create a kind of class warfare. The poor are set against the rich, employees against employers, women against men. Envy is the breeding ground for strife and even war. Envy is not restricted to the poor. — R.C. Sproul

I returned to the university only after the Second World War, and, even then, not having been in the resistance, I had political difficulties." "Why weren't you in the resistance?" "I was tired. And you have to have a certain temperament. You have to be fixed on the point. You need what politicians have, which is the absence of a sense of mortality. It comes, like a drug, from adoration and deference. Revolutionaries get it from dreams. They say that nothing is apolitical, that politics, the bedrock of life, is something from which you cannot depart. I say, fuck them. — Mark Helprin

We in politics are accustomed to seeing reality firsthand and then watching its distant cousin, events as portrayed by the media, unfold on our televisions. We know that what happened in Congress and what is reported to have taken place are two very different things. But that disjuncture, so familiar to politicians, is new to the viewing public. By seeing war and war coverage juxtaposed nightly on their screens, Americans have learned the crucial lesson: not to trust the news anchors. — Dick Morris