Chris Hedges Quotes

No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.

Our country is being bled daily in an effort to create a democracy in a place where it never existed.

I think that war is diplomacy by other means, for sure, and there have been wars that have been fought for righteous reasons. There are wars that have had to be fought, and there will probably continue to be.

I am voting for this war so as not to be disloyal to President Bush.

The Democrats are the party of war.

Democracies are prone to war, and war consumes them.

We in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war

War and democracy have never been happy bedfellows…. War has always threatened democracy.

It’s not only time to It is time not to take force off the table… It is time to put force on the table and use it

War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.

Tony Blair is a decent man who genuinely thinks what he is doing is justified. But when he sees men such as George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld smirking and boasting as they announce their Shock and Awe offensive, we hope he understands why we believe we have been dragged into something we should have been fighting tooth and nail to stop.

We know about bad guys, what they do, and often, who they are. The politicians have chosen to send us into battle, and that's our trade. We do what's necessary. And in my view, once those politicians have elected to send us out to do what 99.9 percent of the country would be terrified to undertake, they should get the hell out of the way and stay there.

The term 'just war' is an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.

If some incarnation of evil as unambiguous as Hitler appeared again, I would have no moral qualms about killing the enemy. But in the modern world of moral murkiness, I prefer to keep my hands as clean of enemy blood as possible.

Maybe a president who didn't believe our soldiers were going to heaven might be a little less willing to get them killed.

The best way to fight evil is to do some good. Let me qualify that—the best way to fight evil at home is to do some good. The best way to fight them abroad is to unleash the military.

The best power of all is to be free, but Obama is not a free person. He is a prisoner of a military system. He talked about closing Guantanamo and ending the war in Iraq. Now he's taken on another war. What's happening?

The American people have no control over what the military does. We have no say in American foreign policy.

If there is no direct threat why are we invading?

Morality is contraband in war.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

The most difficult idea to reconcile in war is the notion that anything is going to be solved by killing a stranger, or in risking your life for a cause anchored in some distant political arena.

I can imagine that the Iraqis undertake the destruction out of fear. If they had denied it, if they had said no, that certainly would have played into the hands of those that would like to take armed action immediately. I have no illusions in that regard.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.