Quotes February 21, 2020

“Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.”
Niccolò Machiavelli
 
 
 
 
“It would be a joke if the conduct of the victor had to be justified to the vanquished.”
“If you wage war, do it energetically and with severity. This is the only way to make it shorter and consequently less inhuman.”
Napoléon Bonaparte
 
 
 
 
“So we go on and don’t do it, and let the war go on. Over a period of 3 and a half or four years, we did burn down every town in North Korea. And every town in South Korea. And what? Killed off 20% of the Korean population. What I’m trying to say is, if once you make a decision to use military force to solve your problem – then you ought to use it. And use an overwhelming military force. Use too much. And deliberately use too much. So that you don’t make an error on the other side, and not quite have enough. And you roll over everything to start with. And you close it down just like that. You save resources. You save lives. Not only your own but the enemies too. And the recovery is quicker. And everybody is back to peaceful existence – hopefully in a shorter period of time.”
Gen. Curtis Lemay, on the all-out bombing campaign the U.S. didn’t do at the beginning of the Korean War as quoted in Dan Carlin’s “The Destroyer of Worlds”
 
 
 
 
“The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.”
Robert Lynd
 
 
 
 
“Optimists study English; pessimists study Chinese; and realists learn to use a Kalashnikov.”
Russian Proverb, due to the threat of Chinese influence in Siberia