George Galloway Quotes

The difference between us and the terrorists is that when we kill innocent civilians, we do so by accident. When they kill innocent civilians, they do it deliberately.

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.

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.

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

If we can kill Saddam, we should.

We as Americans believe it's OK to kill people. We believe it's OK to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. We think it's OK to invade a country where we think Osama Bin Laden is and he's in the other country. So we just go in and we just kill. And we have the death penalty; we sanction it.

'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.

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

Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough. He's in a position either to kill or not to kill, and he's made the decision to kill.

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

Two days after the Boston marathon bombings, there was a drone strike in Yemen attacking a peaceful village, which killed a target who could very easily have been apprehended. But, of course, it is just easier to terrorise people. The drones are a terrorist weapon; they not only kill targets but also terrorise other people.

They were targeting those people I referred to as 'little Eichmanns.' These were legitimate targets.

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.

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.

We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

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

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.

By burning down their reed-hutted villages, after we'd warned them to get out, we put them to the maximum amount of inconvenience, without physical hurt [sic], and they soon stopped their raiding and looting. The Arabs and Kurds now know what real bombing is like; in casualties and damage, they know that within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.

Under no circumstances may nuclear weapons or other instruments of mass slaughter be used for the purpose of destroying population centers or other predominantly civilian targets. Retaliatory action which would indiscriminately and disproportionately take many wholly innocent lives, lives of people who are in no way responsible .for reckless actions of their government, must also be condemned.

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.

I remain troubled by the deliberate killing of civilians, whether by the United States or by its enemies.

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

Drone attacks subvert the rule of law - we become judge, jury, and executioner - at the push of a button.

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

I am not a 'defender' of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned.