Conflict Justification Quotes

By linking these countries together in his 'axis of evil' speech, President Bush implied an identity between them not only in terms of their threat, but also in terms of the action necessary to deal with the threat. A lot of work will now need to be done to delink the three, and to show why military action against Iraq is so much more justified than against Iran and North Korea.

It isn't true, in any conventional meaning of the term, that the United States or its NATO partners 'invaded' Afghanistan.

All wars are sacred to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight?

Maybe I beef with people, but it was never random. Anybody you name, I could give you the reason why it happened or whatever led to the beef.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Legitimate steps of self-defence which Israel takes in its war against Palestinian terror - actions which any sovereign state is obligated to undertake to ensure the security of its citizens - are presented by those who hate Israel as aggressive, Nazi-like steps.

There were major intelligence failures and staying out there chasing weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist was not what I wanted to do.

Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.

The utterly fallacious idea at the heart of the pro-war argument is that it is the duty of the anti-war argument to provide an alternative to war. The onus is on them to explain just cause.

This is not violence, this is legitimate resistance. This is our people's right to resist Israeli occupation.

Most wars, after all, present themselves as humanitarian endeavors to help people.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.

Formerly, a nation that broke the peace did not trouble to try and prove to the world that it was done solely from higher motives…Now war has a bad conscience. Now every nation assures us that it is bleeding for a human cause, the fate of which hangs in the balance of its victory…No nation dares to admit the guilt of blood before the world.

I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.

Operation Peace for Galilee is not a military operation resulting from the lack of an alternative.

To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

I was very much in favor of the Iraq invasion.

The professed war-weariness among populations who have sent only a small percentage of their sons and daughters to fight in recent wars may derive from a failure to communicate effectively what is at stake in those wars and explain why the efforts are worthy of the risks, resources, and sacrifices necessary to sustain the strategy.

It is the good war that hallows every cause.

Oh you tell me that there's danger to the land you call your own, And you watch them build the war machine right beside your home, And you tell me that you're ready to go marchin' to the war, I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

What is the 'noble cause' for which you sent our country to war?

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.

The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.

The same goes for the refugees. Mrs.[Indira] Gandhi says ten million. It's obvious she started with that figure in order to legalize her offensive and invade East Pakistan. But when we invited the United Nations to check, the Indians were opposed. Why were they opposed? If the figure were exact, they shouldn't have been afraid of its being verified.