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Iraq Quotes

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Iraq Quotes

“This country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of sacrifice of our veterans. As a civilian I owe an unpayable debt to all our military. Going forward let’s not send our servicemen and women off to war or conflict zones unless it is overwhelmingly justifiable and on moral high ground. The men of WWII were the greatest generation, perhaps Korea the forgotten, Vietnam the trampled, Cold War unsung and Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan vets underestimated. Every generation has proved itself to be worthy to stand up to the precedent of the greatest generation. Going back to the Revolution American soldiers have been the best in the world. Let’s all take a remembrance for all veterans who served or are serving, peace time or wartime and gone or still with us. 11/11/16 May God Bless America and All Veterans.”

WarAmericaFreedomCourageSacrificeMilitaryRevolutionHonorArmyIndependenceIraqRevolutionaryServiceCombatAfghanistanVietnamCold WarSelflessnessVeteranNavyKoreaMemorialSealsMemorial DayRangersVeteransMarinesCoast GuardAirforceCoastguardPj SMarine CorpSocomSof
Author:Thomas M Smith
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“As he grew older, which was mostly in my absence, my firstborn son, Alexander, became ever more humorous and courageous. There came a time, as the confrontation with the enemies of our civilization became more acute, when he sent off various applications to enlist in the armed forces. I didn't want to be involved in this decision either way, especially since I was being regularly taunted for not having 'sent' any of my children to fight in the wars of resistance that I supported. (As if I could 'send' anybody, let alone a grown-up and tough and smart young man: what moral imbeciles the 'anti-war' people have become.)”

WarCourageHumourMoralityIraqResistanceAntiwarEnemiesCivilisationIraq WarWar On TerrorFathersSons
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Peace is not so much a political mandate as it is a shared state of consciousness that remains elevated and intact only to the degree that those who value it volunteer their existence as living examples of the same... Peace ends with the unraveling of individual hope and the emergence of the will to worship violence as a healer of private and social dis-ease.”

WarPhilosophyInspirationSpiritualityPeaceIraqTerrorismAfghanistanUkraineCourage To LoveHuman Rights DayPolice ReformPeacismSyrian WarWorld Suicide Prevention DayWaging PeaceTeaching DiversityPolice ShootingsStop Killing Each OtherWar In IraqSeptember 9 11
Book:The American Poet Who Went Home Again
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“The Air Force was confused about what it wanted me to be when I grew up. I applied for an ROTC scholarship out of high school because I wanted to be an astronaut. None of my teachers had ever broken the news to me that I couldn’t fly into space, so the third-grade dream remained.”

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Book:The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows
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“George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism—the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it—is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.”

EvilUnited StatesMoralityIraqLiberalismAnti WarUnited NationsIraq WarRwandaLeftismSudanAbsolutismPeace MovementMoral RelativismBill ClintonGeorge W BushSaddam HusseinRwandan GenocideDemocratic Party United StatesMoral AbsolutismBa Ath PartyMadeleine AlbrightOpposition To The Iraq WarPresidency Of Bill ClintonAl Shifa Pharmaceutical FactoryPresidency Of George W Bush
Book:Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left
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“This modern society suffers from lack of belonging, i.e. not belonging to the homeland and feeling it. Those who feel belonging to the homeland put it at the forefront of their calculations, so the interest of the homeland becomes the first point on which it is not permissible to discuss, and then the rest of the things come in succession, as for those who think about anything.” Everything" before the homeland, this suffers from not belonging to the homeland.”

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Author:Yousif Ali Yousif
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“During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and 'experience' to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband’s help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration?”

United StatesLiesIraqNational SecurityIraq WarIowaHillary ClintonBill ClintonGeorge W Bush2008Saddam HusseinUnited States Elections 2008Al GoreUnited States SenateBa Ath PartyBa Athist IraqBa AthismIowa Caucuses
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her 'greatness' (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?”

PoliticsSexUnited StatesGreatnessAmbitionLiesIraqIraq WarIowaExpediencyNew HampshireSelf PromotionHillary ClintonBill Clinton2008United States Elections 20081992Iowa CaucusesNew Hampshire Primary
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Remember “what happened in Iraq”? If you don’t, let’s take a stroll down memory lane. It was a grand display of Western arrogance where the US, the UK, and a gaggle of NATO allies decided to bomb the living daylights out of a sovereign nation under the pretence of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. This wasn’t a liberation; it was a cold-blooded invasion based on a tapestry of lies.”

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Author:Rove Monteux
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“Was I still myself? If so, who was I? I wasn’t really interested in knowing that. It had no sort of importance for me anymore. Some moorings had broken, some taboos had fallen, and a world of spells and anathemas was springing up from their ruins. What was terrifying about this whole affair was the ease with which I passed from one universe to another without feeling out of place. Such a smooth transition. I had gone to bed a docile, courteous boy, and I’d awakened with an inextinguishable rage lodged in my very flesh. I carried my hatred like a second nature; it was my armor and my shirt of Nessus, my pedestal and my stake; it was all that remained to me in this false, unjust, arid, and cruel life.”

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Author:Yasmina Khadra
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“A woman in combat? Yes. Since when? Since Native American warrior Buffalo Calf Road Woman knocked that prick General George Custer off of his horse. Since Pantea Arteshbod propelled herself to become one of the greatest Persian commanders during the reign of Cyrus the Great. Since Hua Mulan disguised herself as a male to engage in combat and became one of China’s most respected heroines.”

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Book:The Desert Warrior
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“Iraq has been forgotten. Even worse, or perhaps precisely because of this forgetting, many new Iraqs have been destroyed and added to the imperial list of oppression and domination since 2003. But, how can Iraq be forgotten? Isn’t forgetting it precisely the reason why many other Iraqs are being created around us without having enough people take notice? Are there still some naïve people out there who believe that what happened there will not happen here, albeit in a different shape or form? Are there any naïve people who believe that humanity can go on surviving with this brutal war machine? Are there still naïve people who divide our planet into 'here' and 'there'?”

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Author:Louis Yako
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“A few days later, Tuesday quietly crossed our apartment as I read a book and, after a nudge against my arm, put his head on my lap. As always, I immediately checked my mental state, trying to assess what was wrong. I knew a change in my biorhythms had brought Tuesday over, because he was always monitoring me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Breathing? Okay. Pulse? Normal. Was I glazed or distracted? Was I lost in Iraq? Was a dark period descending? I didn't think so, but I knew something must be wrong, and I was starting to worry...until I looked into Tuesday's eyes. They were staring at me softly from under those big eyebrows, and there was nothing in them but love.”

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Book:Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him
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“1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.”

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Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR's thinking, "he is our bloody tyrant." In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervened in the name of some grand theory of international justice were doing so to protect their own selfish interests and to maintain Arab subordination to the west.”

WarIslamIraqTyrannyImperialismUnited NationsGulf WarAmerican Foreign PolicyMilitary InterventionSaddam HusseinWestern Hypocrisy
Book:The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
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“First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain.”

WarIraqIranAfghanistanForeign PolicySyriaNorth KoreaRepressionDespotismIraq WarAntiwar MovementInterventionismForeign Policy Of The UsWar In Afghanistan 2001 PresentAxis Of Evil
Book:A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq
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“I was taken to a villa to meet Sabri al-Banna, known as 'Abu Nidal' ('father of struggle'), who was at the time emerging as one of Yasser Arafat's main enemies. The meeting began inauspiciously when Abu Nidal asked me if I would like to be trained in one of his camps. No thanks, I explained. From this awkward beginning there was a further decline. I was then asked if I knew Said Hammami, the envoy of the PLO in London. I did in fact know him. He was a brave and decent man, who in a series of articles in the London Times had floated the first-ever trial balloon for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. 'Well tell him he is a traitor,' barked my host. 'And tell him we have only one way with those who betray us.' The rest of the interview passed as so many Middle Eastern interviews do: too many small cups of coffee served with too much fuss; too many unemployed heavies standing about with nothing to do and nobody to do it with; too much ugly furniture, too many too-bright electric lights; and much too much faux bonhomie. The only political fact I could winnow, from Abu Nidal's vainglorious claims to control X number of 'fighters' in Y number of countries, was that he admired the People's Republic of China for not recognizing the State of Israel. I forget how I got out of his office.”

WarPoliticsIraqIsraelChinaLondonInterviewsMiddle EastPalestineArafatMilitary TrainingTwo State SolutionPloThe TimesAbu NidalSaid Hammami
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“The debacle in Iraq has reinforced the realist dictum, disparaged by idealists in the 1990s, that the legacies of geography, history and culture really do set limits on what can be accomplished in any given place. But the experience in the Balkans reinforced an idealist dictum that is equally true: One should always work near the limits of what is possible rather than cynically give up on any place. In this decade idealists went too far; in the previous one, it was realists who did not go far enough.”

WarIraqIdealismBosniaHumanitarian InterventionInterventionismRealpolitikNoninterventionism
Author:Robert D. Kaplan
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“Michael Ledeen—a contributing editor of National Review and a Freedom Scholar at the influential neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute—wrote on the National Review blog in November 2006: 'I had and have no involvement with our Iraq policy'. I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place.' Ledeen, however, wrote in August 2002 of 'the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein' and when he was interviewed for Front Page Magazine the same month and asked, 'Okay, well if we are all so certain about the dire need to invade Iraq, then when do we do so?' Ledeen replied: 'Yesterday.' There is obvious, substantial risk in falsely claiming that one opposed the Iraq War notwithstanding a public record of support. But that war has come to be viewed as such a profound failure that that risk, at least in the eyes of some, is outweighed by the prospect of being associated with Bush's invasion.”

WarPoliticsIraqHypocrisyCowardiceForeign PolicyIraq WarAnti War MovementSaddam HusseinRevisionism2006Neoconservatism2002Opposition To The Iraq War2003 Invasion Of IraqAmerican Enterprise InstituteFrontpage MagazineMichael LedeenNational Review
Book:A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency
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“Is Chad your only child?" I asked, just as a way to prod him into speaking. "My only one, and I didn't even know he was in trouble, not until one of the gals in the office called me Saturday night. My own boy, and I didn't know. That's what that I-raq war did, turned him into a boy who couldn't call his old man when he was in trouble." "Would he have, before the war?" He nodded. "We used to talk every day, even when he was off at Grand Valley State. Even when he first deployed. But then the war got to him. The violence. He saw his whole unit die around him during his third deployment, and that did him in. It was like he blamed me, in a way." "Blamed you?" "I thought a lot about this," he said. "I think he felt I should have protected him. I was his dad, see, and he always, oh, looked up to me. At least when he was small. I worked construction my whole life, although I'm a project manager now, for Mercurio. I was stronger than most guys, and Chad, he thought I could always take care of trouble around him, or me, and I always thought so, too. Until he went off to I-raq, where no one could protect him. It's in my dreams all the time, that I should have saved him from seeing what he had to see. I couldn't save him, and he couldn't talk to me anymore.”

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Book:Body Work
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“My name is Steve Eston, I'm from Campbellford, Wisconsin. I was a fort observer in the United States army for just under five years. I deployed to Solder City, Iraq in 2005.,and I am giving back my medals for the children of Iraq and Afghanistan. May they be able to forgive us for what we have done to them, may we begin to heal and may we live in peace for here to eternity.”

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Author:Veterans for Peace
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“A smaller but still significant risk of taking the neoliberal pill is you get more misguided adventures like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, there’s no way that elites could get us into another Iraq today. This at first glance appears to be a good thing, but it’s been at the cost of our culture becoming more neurotic, cynical, parochial, and fearful. Americans wouldn’t go off and die by the thousands in Iraq today because they don’t think anything is worth fighting for or believing in. Young people aren’t even leaving the house. I’d rather be a country that occasionally fights stupid wars than one that shuts itself off from the rest of the world and gives up on any idealistic vision of the future.”

WarIraqAfghanistanForeign PolicyNeoliberalismInterventionismNeoliberal
Author:Richard Hanania
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“If the Bahreini royal family can have an embassy, a state, and a seat at the UN, why should the twenty-five million Kurds not have a claim to autonomy? The alleviation of their suffering and the assertion of their self-government is one of the few unarguable benefits of regime change in Iraq. It is not a position from which any moral retreat would be allowable.”

MoralityIraqAutonomyRoyaltyIraq WarKurdistanBahrainStatehoodKurdish PeopleAl Khalifa Family
Book:A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq
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“أنْ تهربَ من الظلم إلى الجنون هو غايةُ العقل، و أن ترميَ بنفسك في التهلكة لتوقفَ عجلة الفقر عن الدوران هو غايةُ الحكمة”

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Book:‫عودة إلى بغداد: قصة كل مغترب عن وطنه ظلّ يحلم بالعودة و كل مغترب داخل وطنه ظلّ يحلم بالرحيل‬
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“هَلْ يَكتبُ تاريخَ الأمم أصحابُ القرار من قادتِها البارزين، أَمْ يَصنعُهُ في الأوقات العصيبة جنودٌ مجهولون تتجاهل ذاكرتُه الجاحدة حتى أسماءهم؟”

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Book:‫عودة إلى بغداد: قصة كل مغترب عن وطنه ظلّ يحلم بالعودة و كل مغترب داخل وطنه ظلّ يحلم بالرحيل‬
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“Evan stares at me. I try to hug him. He takes a step back. I pause, my heart in my throat. I’ve got to reach out to him, let myself be vulnerable. I find the courage, but he backs up again. “You can’t go to Iraq anymore.” “I know.” He looks up at Deanna, then back to me. “Did you fight bad guys? You told me you weren’t.” His voice is suspicious, full of accusation. He doesn’t trust me, and I don’t blame him for that. “No, Evan. I didn’t fight bad guys.” I can’t bring myself to tell him the complete truth. I want so desperately to go back into this fight. I miss it every day. I always felt I could change the world with a rifle in my hands and our flag on my shoulder. “Did you get shot?” he looks me over, apparently searching for bullet wounds. I grin a little. “No, Bud, I didn’t get shot.” “People get shot in Iraq.” “Yes, they do.” It strikes me then that Evan for the first time has a grasp on the dangers that are faced over there. He’s six now, and the world is coming into focus for him. “People get shot, Daddy. They die. Bad guys kill them.” I think of Edward Iwan and Sean Sims. “Yeah, I know they do, Evan.”

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Book:House to House: An Epic Memoir of War
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“Fuck it,” said Private First Class Chris Barnes, raising his hand. “Let’s do it. This sounds like a great fucking idea. Who wants to get blown up?” They started laughing. Watt, Barker, Cortez, and Private First Class Shane Hoeck all raised their hands. They did not give a damn anymore. It was all so absurd to them, that they were going to drive up and down a road for the next eight hours as bomb magnets. The only thing that they could do was laugh. “Hooray! We’re going out to get blown up!” they sang. “Who’s on board? Hey, who wants to come get blown up? Woohoo! Yeah, dude, I am ready to go fucking die! We are all going to fucking die!”

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Book:Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent Into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death
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“I think of the hundreds upon hundreds of pictures and videos of the mutilated, the starved, the dismembered, and I am reminded that all of this is functionally invisible to so many in the part of the world where I now live. That if it were presented to them, some would undoubtedly respond the way Barbara Bush once did when asked about the Iraqi dead: “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” But others, I think, would recoil in a different way. Stubborn as anything, I hang on to the hope that, presented with proof of injustice, the majority human reflex is to act against it.”

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Book:One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
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