James K. Glassman Quotes

The death of innocents was an Israeli mistake but a Palestinian objective.

What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Were there not innocent civilians there? We are simply taking the rules of engagement that you have invented and turning them back against you.

The only moral question with suicide bombing is who the target is. And in that sense, the suicide bomber is no different from the stealth bomber or the cruise missile. If it is targeted at civilian people, then it is morally wrong, whether done by Bush, Blair, or a suicide bomber.

For us every dead Lebanese child is a terrible tragedy. For Hezbollah, every dead Israeli child is a desired outcome and a victory…. We apologize when civilians are killed. Hezbollah celebrates whenever they can kill a Jewish woman or child. .

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

I really believe that carpet-bombing, bombing civilian populations, is a form of terror - it's state terror as opposed to vigilante terrorism.

The last thing we want to do is to go into an area and inflict unnecessary civilian casualties. One is too many.

There is no moral equivalency between those who would kill using children, innocent civilians, children and adults, in their homes and in their places of worship, to that of a government that is seeking those terrorists before they can engage in that awful activity.

Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.

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

The troops are therefore empowered and are in duty bound in this war to use without mitigation even against women and children any means that will lead to success.

It is a rule of international law that weapons and methods of warfare which do not discriminate between combatants and civilians should never be used.

What is and isn't justified by military necessity is, naturally, open to interpretation. One of the key concepts, though, is the law of proportionality. A military attack that results in civilian casualties - 'collateral damage' - is acceptable as long as the military benefits outweigh the price that is paid by humanity.

The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians, but it was Christians in World War II who bombed innocent civilians in Dresden and dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.

War … inevitably hurts the innocent …. Deliberate targeting of civilians may be prevented, but the nature of real war is that accidental collateral damage is a regular cost of doing business. Accidental death and destruction can be reduced by improved technology or restraints on strategy, but it cannot yet be eliminated in any war of consequences.

Terrorists bombard complete cities, such as Fallujah, Baghdad, innocent women and children.

All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.

As in any war, there have been dreadful mistakes and civilian casualties. The difference is when Israelis kill innocents they apologize; when Hezbollah kills innocents they celebrate.

The war on terror is the most insane and immoral war of all time. The Americans are doing what they did in Vietnam, bombing villages. But how can a civilised nation do this? How can you can eliminate suspects, their wives, their children, their families, their neighbours? How can you justify this?

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.

The dropping of bombs on people - isn't that terrorism?

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

It would be easy to define terrorism as attacks against human rights and international humanitarian law forbids attacks against innocent non-combatants which is often the definition used for terrorism.

You can't bomb a people just in case.

Perhaps the most basic rule of the law of armed conflict is that civilians and civilian objects must not be made the object of direct attack, although incidental injuries caused to such persons or objects in the course of a legitimate attack must be proportionate to the purpose of the attack.