Conflict Ethics Quotes

In war you don’t have to be nice, you just have to be right.

Iraq is an unjust war. I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.

Why our elected leaders continue to believe that such genocidal weapons are legitimate and moral in our hands but illegitimate and immoral in the hands of our enemies…

The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.

The moral absolute should be: if and when, in any dispute, one side initiates the use of physical force, that side is wrong - and no consideration or discussion of the issues is necessary or appropriate.

Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending in among women and children. I heard they were making statements that they were proud of losing fewer armed men than civilians. It's hard to see how they could be proud of such a situation.

We saw his [Donald Trump] children appointed this week to formal roles in the transition. A lot of ethics experts looking at that and saying that there is not a blind trust.

The use of military force against Iraq and Afghanistan was and remains just.

People say the war in Iraq is a bad war, and the war in Afghanistan is a good war, but what's the difference between them? Democratic people around the world cannot accept that this is a good war. This is just endless war.

Well, my theory is this: war is such a terrible, such an atrocious, thing that no man, at least no Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of beginning it; but it belongs to government alone, when it becomes inevitable.

I don't give a damn about the civilians.

Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.

Scarcely is there any peace so unjust that it is better than even the fairest war. -Vix ulla tam iniqua pax, quin bello vel aequissimo sit potior

War makes its own morals.

An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.

What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals?

I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property, for offense or defense.

If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals.

If you make a film and then two and a half, three years later, suddenly the country's changed and you look like you just happened to hit it. I actually like being contrarian. I would have preferred to come out three years ago when everyone was disagreeing with me. But hopefully it asks a lot of questions about our responsibility in sending young men and women to war, especially a war that's so complex, where there's no right answer, where they're forced with impossible decisions every day.

When a soldier goes to war he has to have a moral justification for killing the other side.

It would be a joke if the conduct of the victor had to be justified to the vanquished.

One of the problems we currently have is there hasn't been in the population any serious engagement with the ethics of war because we have an all-volunteer army. I would think the return to the draft would be an intervention that would require discussion that might be more helpful in terms of our ability to limit war.