Ernest Hemingway Quotes

… it was not necessary to make any definition of "aggressor" or "self-defense." I do not think it can be done, anyway, accurately. They have been trying to do it in Europe for six or eight years, and they never have been able to accurately define " aggressor " or " self-defense.

As the war was just in its origin and necessary and noble in its objects, we can reflect with a proud satisfaction that in carrying it on no principle of justice or honor, no usage of civilized nations, no precept of courtesy or humanity, have been infringed.

Preventive war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy.

No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well.

War of aggression, war which does not imply defense of one's country, is a collective crime.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

The major wars that the U.S. became involved in are all ethically defensible.

You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians.

The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.

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

Are there really good wars and bad wars? We thought so during World War II, and in retrospect, we were right. But in Vietnam, and Iraq we were wrong.

It's never acceptable to target civilians. It violates the Geneva Accords, it violates the international law of war and it violates all principles of morality.

You cannot be politically correct in a war.

I think we need to ask serious questions about how we engage militarily, when we engage militarily, and on what basis we engage militarily. What kind of intelligence do we have to justify a military engagement?

When a soldier goes to war he has to have a moral justification for killing the other side.

War itself is justifiable only on principles of self-preservation:

If you recognize the right of every nation to construe for itself what is aggressive war and what is defensive war, you have not accomplished much by agreeing to renounce war.

You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.

The use of military force against Iraq and Afghanistan was and remains just.

I am not a pacifist and I would back a lawful, coherent and compelling case for the use of military force by the U.K. against Isis.

Jihad should be waged in places where there is war. Bombings in places where there is no war is not a good thing.

War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil.

It takes a disciplined imagination to acknowledge that the less personal savageries of bombs, missiles, artillery and heavy weapons are, to those blown to smithereens, also barbaric. The main horror of what the coalition is doing is not a matter of the occasional soldier who, in the heat of battle, commits a war crime, but the steady destruction rained on cities, villages, the Iraqi people. This violence is wreaked calmly, from a distance, within the rules of engagement. The war itself is the American war crime.

The laws of war right now say that we can respond when our country is threatened. That is what international law says.

War knows no law except that of might.