Urban Warfare Quotes

These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, of course, a part of Hitler's invasion plans. He hopes, by killing large numbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city ... Little does he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre of the Londoners.

Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.

Conflicts are increasingly causing devastation in densely populated urban centres rather than open battlefields, creating a host of new problems through the cumulative impact from the destruction of vital services like water and electricity.

Hussein praised his sons for putting up a brave fight, noting that U.S. forces had surrounded their compound with advanced weaponry, ground troops and warplanes. In case that didn't work, U.S. forces were prepared to tell Janet Reno that a small Cuban boy was inside the house.

They will not fight you all except within fortified cities or from behind walls…

While the nature of warfare is changing and wars are moving into cities, they are also becoming longer and their consequences more impactful.

Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare.

Paris must either not fall into the hands of the enemy or the enemy must find it only a wasteland.

Well, I think it's too early to call Fallujah a failure.

He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done.

Until we go through it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches, schools demolished - only after that gruesome experience will we realize what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina.

The consensus is that no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well-supplied with ammunition.

How can you lay siege to a whole country? Who is really under siege now? Baghdad cannot be besieged.

The history of warfare has not yet enabled any army, any civilized army, the army of a democracy like Israel, to be able to deal with a ruthless terrorist enemy that uses civilians as a human shield without having some incidental civilian casualties.

We counted 19 missiles that landed in a small area of Baghdad.

When we talk about total war, and we talk about war zones, and we talk about the breakdown of the cities, when you exclude questions of race from that discourse, something disappears that's really central to the forms of repression that we're talking about.

They've not been able to control any Iraqi city. We're waging war against this snake and we will be victorious.

The war is in the mountains,” he said. “For as long as I can remember, they have killed us in the cities with decrees, not with bullets.

What's somewhat puzzling is that Churchill himself knew what the reaction would be to any sort of aerial attack on cities, because in 1938 he said that in a future war British cities would be attacked by bombing, and that the response would be that all men would want to join the fight because they would be so incensed by this cowardly manner of attack. Which is a very natural response: when something drops on you from the air and blows up a bunch of buildings and kills people in their sleep, the reaction is going to be rage, confusion, and a search for something to destroy in retaliation.

Though not the longest battle in history - that was Verdun - Stalingrad was certainly the most pitiless, an adjective that reappears regularly in Mr. Beevor's classic work.

Cities are made for enemies to destroy.

I can't help thinking the failed New York bomber would've done far more damage if he'd simply driven throught Times Square in a Toyota.

If you smash a city when you're trying to capture it, you actually end up providing the perfect terrain for the defenders while blocking the access for your own armoured vehicles.

I was attempting to, with a good cover story, test to see what would happen in subways, for example, when a cloud was laid down on a city. It was denied on reasons that always seemed a little absurd to me