Sylvia Plath Quotes

There is such a thing as legitimate warfare: war has its laws; there are things which may fairly be done, and things which may not be done.

Are there really good wars and bad wars? We thought so during World War II, and in retrospect, we were right. But in Vietnam, and Iraq we were wrong.

When a soldier goes to war he has to have a moral justification for killing the other side.

As the war was just in its origin and necessary and noble in its objects, we can reflect with a proud satisfaction that in carrying it on no principle of justice or honor, no usage of civilized nations, no precept of courtesy or humanity, have been infringed.

War is a nasty, dirty, rotten business. It's all right for the Navy to blockade a city, to starve the inhabitants to death. But there is something wrong, not nice, about bombing that city.

An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.

'Reversible Errors' is about the limits of the law to define who committed ultimate evil, to define what ultimate evil is, to allow the million arbitrary factors to make this a meaningful punishment, and finally to say, 'Are we really accomplishing what we wanted to accomplish? Are those anxieties relieved?' I don't think so.

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

One to destroy, is murder by the law; and gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; to murder thousands, takes a specious name, 'War's glorious art', and gives immortal fame.

An order to fire on people that do not fire on you is a completely illegal order.

It's one thing to say don't commit atrocities on the battlefield. It's another thing to say don't get caught doing atrocities.

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?

If you shell a military base and happen to kill civilians, you have not committed a war crime; if you deliberately target cities and towns, you have.

We need to keep examining evilness. For instance, I'm totally against the fact that Osama bin Laden was shot. I think that he should have been put on trial and exposed as that human being he was. I think he should've been standing mentally naked in front of the rest of us and stand to justice for what he did.

The destruction of civilian hamlets, the killing and the wounding of civilians, became vastly greater than it had been before, and it was very upsetting; but I still couldn't bring myself to understand that the policy itself was wrong.

While Taliban fighters had an initial claim to protection under the conventions, they lost POW status by failing to obey the standards of conduct for legal combatants: wearing uniforms, a responsible command structure, and obeying the laws of war.

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.

I think that you are a war criminal, and I am going to do everything in my power to see that you will be tried as one.

Is it really more barbaric to be killed by chemicals than by “legitimate” weapons?

[On the Vietnam War:] I leave all morality up to you clergymen.

I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children. They were all classified as the same, and that's the classification that we dealt with over there, just as the enemy. I felt then and I still do that I acted as I was directed, and I carried out the order that I was given and I do not feel wrong in doing so.

When you start off with them being the bad guys and you being the good guys, once you've made that one decision, you don't have to think anymore, if you're in the military. From that point on, anything goes. From that point on, you're capable of anything, even atrocities. Because you've made a decision a long time ago that you're on the right side. You don't keep questioning, questioning, questioning

I cannot think of any moral definition of anti-war that includes simply ignoring the slaughter of civilians.

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.