Tag: Words for War

By Von Clausewitz (a pseudonym for a military person that desires anonymity)

On operational command and civil-military relations:

‘I spend a great deal of time imprisoned in my office, captive to the demands of Canberra. As much as possible I shield the unit commanders in Afghanistan from the deadening touch of Defence bureaucrats and political wrangling, but not always successfully. I tear my hair out in frustration when I am second-guessed, undermined or contradicted by staff officers half a world away; sometimes I get actual help. I have a bit of a blue with my boss, a turf war; we patch it up and get on with it’.

From Exit Wounds by Major General (ret) John Cantwell (Australian Army)

On hope as a course of action

‘It was all very well hoping confidently and optimistically that the grand endeavour would be smiled upon by a benevolent deity, but the battle-hardened old-timers taught us that you shouldn’t mix hope and soldiering’.

From Kandak by Patrick Hennessey

By Lieutenant Colonel Dave Lyle, US Air Force

How Wars Start

“To be saved from folly you need either kind friends or fierce enemies.” 

Diogenes of Sinope (aka Diogenes the Cynic)

How War Works

“In the history of the world, there have been persons in leadership positions who have not thought things through as well as they might have. Nor have they always been able to direct matters even skillfully enough to achieve their short sighted objectives. One of the traditional places where the price for that is paid is in the trenches where the common soldier has to crawl in simple self-preservation. Far less often is the price paid in the distant citadels of power, and even then it is normally paid in bloodless coin, limousines taking the henchmen away to minimum-security detentions or to exile in luxury.” 

Algis Budrys, in the introduction to L. Ron Hubbard’s Final Blackout

By Phil Walter

“I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions;  I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death.  Let him who loves his country in his heart and not with lips only follow me.”        

               -Giuseppe Garibaldi

By PJ Neal

Reality

“Although the war is over the memories still go on in my dreams.  I still see the desperate fighting, and hear the groans of the wounded.  The World War cost the United States more than 342,000 wounded and approximately 39,500 killed in action.  There were 9,665,000 men killed in the World War, all for the craze of territory expansion, greed and the almighty dollar.  Yet the “War Dogs” and the politicians pay hypocritical homage to the dead, saying:  ‘They died gloriously for their country.’  Like hell.  The ones I saw died pitifully, just doing their duty.”

– John W. Nell, The Lost Battalion:  A Private’s Story

By Sir Lawrence Freedman

“For War, consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of Warre; as it is in the nature of Weather.”

               -Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan