Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by A.E. Samaan

Quote by A.E. Samaan

“Peace is mutual. War is unilateral. When war comes, it does so without your blessing or your vote.”

Quote by A.E. Samaan

Author

A.E. Samaan

Browse famous quotes and profile details for A.E. Samaan. more

You May Also Like

“And if the Americans could bomb a hospital in Serbia or a civilian housing estate in Baghdad, who were the hypocritical West to object when the Israeli army slaughtered the innocents of Lebanon and Gaza in identical ways? This, then, is another theme of this book; the ‘normalisation’ of this latest warfare, which deletes the protection of civilians enshrined in international law in favour of a new and cruel morality:”

“Our wars in Iraq, in Bosnia and in Kosovo contained a sinister pattern, a ‘normalisation’ of war. If our outrageous assaults on our enemies were too much for the audience, we either apologised – accidents happen in war, do they not? – or we blamed the victims. If we bombed a bunker packed with civilians in Baghdad, it was only because Saddam had used identical bunkers for command and control operations. So when we bombed Afghanistan in 2001 and destroyed entire villages, it was because al-Qaeda or the Taliban had been hiding there or – if they hadn’t – their tactic of hiding in other villages was to blame. And in 2003, we created a pageant of identical ruthlessness against the Iraqis.”

“The male’s chief delight in life—insofar as the tense, grim male can ever be said to delight in anything—is in exposing others. It doesn’t much matter what they’re exposed as, so long as they’re exposed; it distracts attention from himself. Exposing others as enemy agents (Communists and Socialists) is one of his favorite pastimes, as it removes the source of the threat to him not only from himself, but from the country and the Western world. The bugs up his ass aren’t in him; they’re in Russia.”

“This is my home, however unsettled it has always been on the inside. I've never thought of it as the place I might die in before I've had a chance to live. There must be a life beyond this fort that I feel so trapped inside. It can't end this way before it's even begun. A meaningless life ended by meaningless death. The silence around me is of a city that has warred with itself all day and is now pretending to sleep. I am sick of pretending. I want to stay up, keep watch, turn on every light in every home so no one can sneak up on us in the dark.”