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Famous Rosa Brooks Quotes

“As budget cuts cripple civilian agencies and programs, they lose their ability to perform ad they once did, so we look to the military to pick up the slack. . . . This requires still higher military budgets, which continues the devastating cycle.”

Military Dynamics Civilian Congressional Failure

Author:Rosa Brooks

“only a small minority of military personnel have combat-related jobs. In 2015, even after two lengthy wars, the percentage of military personnel in combat specialties was only 14 percent overall—with substantial differences between the services: for instance, 28 percent of enlisted Army personnel serve in jobs that are classified as combat positions compared to just 3 percent of Navy enlisted personnel. To be sure, many military personnel in noncombat positions end up in combat [zones] anyway. . . . But even when deployed in combat zones, most members of the military never end up fighting.”

Overcompensation Rule Of Eights

Book:How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Source: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

“the U.S. government has a long history of overclassifying information that shouldn't be classified at all—and keeping information classified until long after any justification for classifying it has disappeared.”

Secret Democracy Secrecy Confidential Top Secret Code Word

Book:How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Source: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

“...And unpredictability can spread: one powerful outlier can pave the way for others, and as more states joint the outlier, the foundations of the rule of law begin to crumble. US counterterrorism practices--and the legal theories that under-pin them--are undermining the international rule of law in precisely this way...”

War International Law Foreign Policy Of The Us

Book:How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Source: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

“Bluntly: the United States will need to accept some further loss of sovereignty in exchange for more just and effective mechanisms for solving collective global problems. No state can combat disease, climate change, or international terrorist organizations on its own--but any state can play a destructive and destabilizing role on its own.”

Foreign Policy International Law Foreign Relations

Book:How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Source: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

“Over-policing is driven in part by the law of supply and demand—police go where people ask them to go. To put it a little differently: Police don’t operate in a vacuum. They are paid by taxpayer dollars; they respond to the directives and incentives created by national, state, and municipal laws, policies, and political pressures; and in a day-to-day sense, they respond to whatever calls happen to come in over the 911 lines, whether those calls involve complaints about armed robberies or about disorderly conduct.”

Policing

Book:Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

Source: Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

“What if instead of telling officers they have a right to go home safe, police training focused on reminding officers that members of the public have a right to go home safe? What if we reminded officers that they are voluntarily taking a risky job, and that if someone dies because of a mistake, it’s better that it be a police officer who is trained and paid to take risks than a member of the public?”

Policing

Book:Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

Source: Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

“policing is not a malevolent conspiracy; most police officers take seriously their role as public servants. The widely publicized incidents of police violence and abuse often lead us to forget that the vast majority of police officers spend the vast majority of their time helping people who ask for their help. Americans call 911 both in genuine emergencies and for trivial reasons, and police officers don’t get to choose whether to respond.”

Policing

Book:Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

Source: Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

“When you have more crimes, you need more cops—and when you have more cops, you find more ways to use them. (In the US, for instance, we consider it normal to have armed police officers enforce compliance with traffic regulations, even though most traffic violations don’t constitute criminal offenses. It’s the equivalent of routinely sending armed police to enforce IRS regulations or municipal building code regulations. It makes little sense, and increases the number of police-citizen encounters with the potential to go badly wrong.)”

Policing

Book:Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

Source: Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

“What line separates the lawful wartime targeting of an enemy combatant from the extrajudicial murder of a man suspected, but not convicted, of wrongdoing? (p8)”

War Drone Attacks Rules Of War

Book:How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Source: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

“Building relationships on a global scale requires putting human beings on the ground in regions all over the world—and only the Army has the manpower to do this.”

Budgets Diplomacy Ideologies

Book:How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Source: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

“It's the secrecy surrounding drone strikes that's most troubling. . . We don't know the targeting criteria, or whether the rules for CIA and military drone strikes differ; we don't know the details of the internal process through which targets are vetted; we don't know the chain of command, or the details of congressional oversight. The United States does not release the names of those killed, or the location or number of strikes, making it impossible to know whether those killed were legitimately viewed as combatants or not. We also don't know the cost of the secret war: How much money has been spent on drone strikes? What's the budget for the related targeting and intelligence infrastructures? How is the government assessing the costs and benefits of counterterrorism drone strikes? That's a lot of secrecy for a targeted killing program that has reportedly caused the deaths of several thousand people. (117-118)”

Assassin Government Accountability Drone Program

Book:How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Source: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

“Many at the State Department think its their job, not the Army's, to develop cultural and regional expertise and relationships. In such quarters, the RAF concept looks less like an innovative approach to global risk management than yet another military effort to replace diplomats with soldiers.”

Military Bureaucracy Job Security Empire Building

Book:How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

Source: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

About the Author

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Quotes: 13

Books & Sources

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the PentagonRelated source material

Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American CityRelated source material