War Laws Quotes

The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest, and a just apprehension lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations.

Indeed, the Roman laws allowed no person to be carried to the wars but he that was in the soldiers' roll.

There are laws for peace as well as war.

The arguments over the limits that may be put on individuals suspected of sympathising with the enemy have occurred over the centuries. Habeas corpus was suspended during the Napoleonic wars, and Defence Regulation 18b was applied during the Second World War.

The rules that bind governments are much looser during wartime than in times of peace.

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see.

I don't think you can perpetrate war crimes with defensive weapons, with air defense systems.

I'm not hugging the Guantanamo location, but our right to hold people under the laws of war as enemy combatants, I think, is unarguable, and we need to stand up for that.

I knew that the Hague Convention prohibited the use of poison in war. I didn't know the details of the terms of the Convention, but I did know of that prohibition.

The neutrality laws are among the oldest laws in our statute books.... Clearly they were not designed for the kind of situation which exists in the world today.

The laws of war do not apply only to the suspected criminals of vanquished nations. There is no moral or legal basis for immunizing victorious nations from scrutiny. The laws of war are not a one-way street.

The laws of war right now say that we can respond when our country is threatened. That is what international law says.

What is the Geneva Convention on wars! I have never read it.

There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.

That is because the conflict with al Qaeda is not governed by the Geneva Conventions, which applies only to international conflicts between states that have signed them.

The soldier does not fire upon the soldier.

The laws will not be silent in time of war but they'll speak with a somewhat different voice.

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.

If I have to reduce all of the laws of war into a single sentence, it is this. You divide the world into two, combatants and noncombatants. You can attack deliberately combatants, but not deliberately noncombatants. Israel acts that way. It attacks combatants and accidentally kills noncombatants. But in the case of the terrorists, it's the exact opposite. They deliberately attack combatants - noncombatants, civilians, deliberately.