Michael Hastings Quotes

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.

And for the people who promote drones as the answer to everything, there is a danger from being distanced from the reality of the ugly mess of war.

People try to glorify war, particularly those who aren't actually fighting in them. People tend to make heroes of those who are fighting in them.

McCain fought in Vietnam - I think that he has enough civilian blood on his hands.

Soldiers willingly, sometimes foolishly, risk their own lives to keep their comrades out of enemy hands.

A true war story is never moral.

Tell mother, tell mother, I died for my country... useless... useless.

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

We owe our World War II veterans - and all our veterans - a debt we can never fully repay.

The battalion, the whole battalion was affected by the two killed just within a week of being there, and I think that that pulled everybody up to make them realise that this was a very serious business.

It is better for aged diplomats to be bored than for young men to die.

I do not see why I should be called upon to run the risk of absolute disaster in order a second time around to save them [the French army].

I've always been really nationalistic, and I had a brother killed in Korea. And I think the 'Star Spangled Banner,' even today - and I've heard it a heckuva lot of times, OK - has always been a significant feeling to me.

There's nothing glorious about combat. I've been there and done that.

If you make an honest picture of war, it will be an antiwar photograph.

What we do with this peace-whether we preserve it and defend it, or whether we lose it and let it slip away-will be the measure of our worthiness of the spirit and sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands who gave their lives in two World Wars, Korea, and in Vietnam.

You could be a Green Beret and a kid could jump out from behind a building and hit you with a rock. No matter how tough you become in the military, there's a way to die: there's nothing safe about it.

War is not a computer-generated missile striking a digital map. War is the color of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single image portrayed on the television screen, but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war ... we will have more humility in our discussions of wars... perhaps it is time to listen to womens side of history.

Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?

O German mother dreaming by the fire, While you are knitting socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

Yes and no. Because America has only about 1 percent of the population serving in the military, it is hard for many civilians to understand the sacrifices military families make. However, my experience is that after the Vietnam War, the public learned that they should support the military whether or not they support the war. You've seen that outpouring of support for the veterans of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

You have to be willing to sacrifice as much to prevent war, as soldiers are willing to sacrifice to wage war.

War in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.

Maybe we should always show pictures. Bin Laden, pictures of our wounded service people, pictures of maimed innocent civilians. We can only make decisions about war if we see what war actually is - and not as a video game where bodies quickly disappear leaving behind a shiny gold coin.

It's angering that not everybody has signed this treaty to ban landmines. It's disgusting, it really is, because it is fact that (mines) hurt a high percentage of civilians. They're not effective in any other real way. They've enough weapons for war.