Walid Muallem Quotes

Cities are made for enemies to destroy.

When you have to besiege a city for a long time, you must not destroy its trees, wielding an ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are the trees human, to withdraw before your siege?

To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape.

It is imperative to contest all factions for complete victory, so the army is not garrisoned and the profit can be total. This is the law of strategic siege.

A little before noon I sent orders to all my batteries to open fire through the streets or at any points where the troops were seen about the city, as a diversion in favor of Jackson.

They will not fight you all except within fortified cities or from behind walls…

Attacks on cities are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and so preserve the lives of allied soldiers.

So why are we practicing this, anyway?" Percy asked. "Do you guys spend a lot of time laying siege to fortified cities?

I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. It therefore seems to me that there is one and only one valid argument on which a case for giving up strategic bombing could be based, namely that it has already completed its task and that nothing now remains for the Armies to do except to occupy Germany against unorganized resistance.

This boa, the American columns, are being besieged between Basra and other towns north, west, south and west of Basra… Now even the American command is under siege. We are hitting it from the north, east, south and west. We chase them here and they chase us there. But at the end we are the people who are laying siege to them. And it is not them who are besieging us.

Fighting in cities is a totally different endeavor than obviously fighting out in the open.

Paris must either not fall into the hands of the enemy or the enemy must find it only a wasteland.

The task [in Afghanistan] is to reduce civilian casualties while still not hesitating to respond to enemies who are trying to kill our soldiers.

You can bring your enemies to their knees with the possible exception of the North Vietnamese.

Our poetry emulates the recent progress in military strategy: Our army's strength is the foot soldiers.

If the enemy stays spirited it is difficult to crush him.

When our new armies are ready it seems folly to send them to Flanders, where they will chew barbed wire, or be wasted in futile frontal attacks.

I have always been interested in the architecture of war, as can be seen in Bunker Archeology. However, at the time that I did the research for that book, I was very young. My aim was to understand the notion of 'Total War'.

I shall await the first shot, and if you do not batter us to pieces, we shall be starved out in a few days.

Free supplies and open retreat are two essentials to the safety of an army or a fleet.

Hussein praised his sons for putting up a brave fight, noting that U.S. forces had surrounded their compound with advanced weaponry, ground troops and warplanes. In case that didn't work, U.S. forces were prepared to tell Janet Reno that a small Cuban boy was inside the house.

To secede from the Union and set up another government would cause war. If you go to war with the United States, you will never conquer her, as she has the money and the men. If she does not whip you by guns, powder, and steel, she will starve you to death. It will take the flower of the country - the young men.

How can you lay siege to a whole country? Who is really under siege now? Baghdad cannot be besieged.

It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.

Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.