Chuck D Quotes

I should not care to live half-frozen in a trench, up to my middle in water, for three or four months, because someone in authority said I ought to shoot Germans. But if I were a Frenchman I should do it, because I would have been accustomed to the idea by my compulsory military service.

So I don't worry about, and people shouldn't worry about a draft I think we're in good shape, I really do. And, if not, we'll - I'll address the nation. But I don't see any need to right now.

When I appeared before the draft board examiner during World War II, he asked me if I thought I could kill. "I don't know about strangers," I replied, "but friends, certainly."

I would have fought in WW2, so I wasn't a pacifist in the broader sense. I prefer to be a pacifist, but I think there are exceptions and times to defend yourself or your country, but that war wasn't one of them.

I think that, most importantly, when I see issues of war, I see them in a personal vein, and I am reluctant to go to war unless there's a real, valid American interest because I've seen the wounded soldiers.

I think in America, especially today, our relationship to war is incredible distant. Yet narratives of war have such a primal power in this culture. They mainline directly into a whole series of emotional reactions and understandings of American patriotism, masculinity, and all of these other things.

And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.

In our Country... one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.

I hated the draft, but at the same time, it's something that made every American take war seriously.

Washington has thrown their soldiers on the fire.

So the whole of war, when you look at it is probably run by professional soldiers, and the rest of them are just recruits, or people who are just forced to join the army.

I was drafted during the Korean War. None of us wanted to go... It was only a couple of years after World War II had ended. We said, 'Wait a second? Didn't we just get through with that?'

The weeping voices rise straight up and strike the clouds. A passer-by at the roadside asks a conscript why, The conscript answers only that drafting happens often.

It is not patriotic to commit young Americans to war unless our national security clearly requires it.

Each man ... shall serve for a training and service period of 12 consecutive months unless sooner discharged, except that whenever the Congress has declared that the national interest is imperiled, such 12-month period may be extended by the President to such time as may be necessary in the interests of national defense.

The draft is the corollary of militarism and militarism spells death to democracy.

... we might better reexamine the reasons for entering the war than abolish volunteers and substitute for them men dragged into the ranks by draft.

Nobody wants to go to war, but the burden of service cannot fall only on volunteers who, are attracted to the military for financial reasons.

Manhood suffrage means manhood obligation for service in peace and war

I've never understood why anyone would want to join the army, but that's irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that, as long as we go on voting in governments who are prepared to take troops into an illegal war, that army is a necessity.

I keep hearing this [expletive] thing that guns don't kill people, but people kill people. If that's the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?

I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, three thousand dollars a year just teaching.

shane: so is world war fifteen over out there? claire:i think so

From the War for Independence to today in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am inspired by the courage, professionalism and patriotism of our men and women in uniform.