Michael Ignatieff Quotes

I can stand by no longer and see these disgusting performances by the Navy and War Departments at the expense of the lives of our people, and the delusion of the American public.

They say military have the so-called 'secret intelligence' - this amount of intelligence must be very secret, since I've never seen any intelligent military person, nor I have seen any sense in the bloody stupid wars.

The Establishment center... has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster - a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation.

The war in Iraq will end, our troops will come home, Bush will be impeached and he will be brought to justice.

The old saying that war is a racket has taken on an even more shameful meaning.

Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again - conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style.

Modern American war is as easy to script as a B movie.

The pinning on of stars reaches its full cynical significance when sanctified valor and bereaved families are used to lend dignity to wars stupidly fought. The courageous and their families are drawn into a circular trap. The sacrificed soldier was valorous under the orders of a commander who has rewarded his effort. The battle was therefore worth fighting. Courage made it worthwhile. The basic rule of war - that it is fought to be won --- has been forgotten.

Soldiers will continue to die in wars that few can convincingly explain why we are fighting.

George W. Bush presided over an international network of torture chambers and, with the help of a compliant Congress and press, launched a war of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.

I used to respect the United States and the American dream. Now I consider the United States the biggest threat to Internet freedom and peace in the world.

The wars of the future will be fought by computer technicians and by lawyers and high-altitude specialists, and that may mean war will be increasingly abstract, hard to think about and hard to control.

The unvarnished truth is that we have spent the last decade funding the machinery of war, and our children have been sacrificed.

In 1940, then-Senator Harry Truman headed up a Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. In the course of World War II, more than $15 billion in unnecessary and fraudulent defense spending was identified.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

Many of the architects of the Vietnam War became near pariahs as they spent the remainder of their lives in the futile quest to explain away their decisions at the time.

The war in Iraq, the abuse of detainees, electronic eavesdropping, Guantanamo Bay - these things were all done on our behalf and they may turn out in the end to have created more terrorists.

I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

I think it's inconsistent to tell the American people that you oppose the war and, yet, you continue to vote to fund the war. Because every time you vote to fund the war, you're reauthorizing the war all over again.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

When I was growing up, it was 'Communists'. Now it's 'Terrorists'. So you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets and everything.

There had to be a hysteria and a fear sent through America in order to get increased war budgets.

What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.

When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.