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Military Quotes

“Recognising that an ostentatious cult of heroism and state service served an important propaganda function for the British elite does not mean, of course, that we should dismiss it as artificial or insincere. All aristocracies have a strong military tradition, and for many British patricians the protracted warfare of the period was a godsend. It gave them a job, and, more important, a purpose, an opportunity to carry out what they had been trained to do since childhood: ride horses, fire guns, exercise their undoubted physical courage and tell other people what to do.”

“You cannot build up a standing army and then throw it back into a box like tin soldiers. Armies equipped to the teeth with weapons, with highly developed instruments of murder and backed by their military interests, have their own dynamic functions.”

Interest Military Weapons Standing Function Army Murder Instruments Soldier Boxes Teeth Tin Militarism

Book:Preparedness, the road to universal slaughter

Source: Preparedness, the road to universal slaughter

“Marx was wrong: It is not only the 'means of production' that shape societies, but the means of destruction. In our own time, the costs of war, or just war readiness, are daunting. ... The resulting cost squeeze has led to a new type of society, perhaps best terms a 'depleted' state, in which the military has drained reources from all other social functions.”

Mean War States Social Term Military Type Cost Shapes Destruction Function Productions Readiness Drained Just War Cost Of War

Author:Barbara Ehrenreich

“Strategy is the most important department of the art of war, and strategical skill is the highest and rarest function of military genius.”

Art Important War Military Genius Skills Highest Function Strategy Department Art Of War

Book:Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan, Major-general U. S. Army

Source: Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan, Major-general U. S. Army

“To confine soldiers to purely military functions while urgent and vital tasks have to be done, and nobody else is available to undertake them, would be senseless. The soldier must then be prepared to become a propagandist, a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a boy scout. But only for as long as he cannot be replaced, for it is better to entrust civilian tasks to civilians.”

“The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship. Any explanation that fixes culpability on individuals is insufficient. No one leader, civilian or military, caused failure in Vietnam or Iraq. Different military and civilian leaders in the two conflicts produced similar results. In both conflicts, the general officer corps designed to advise policymakers, prepare forces and conduct operations failed to perform its intended functions.”

“Military power tends to be a function of economic power, and the British Navy was the essential capability for establishing the imperial sway - which was attuned to furnish the raw materials for the British manufacturing ascendance. So they were mutually reinforcing.”

Economic Military Materials Essentials Function British Capability Navy Manufacturing Raw Materials Economic Power Military Power British Navy

Author:Charles R. Morris