Quotes About Casualties

genocidal attack had punched inward past Crestwell to take out three of the Federation's fourteen major extra-Solar star systems, with one hundred percent civilian casualties. But

There are times when American lives must be risked and lost. Foreign policy cannot be paralyzed by the prospect of casualties. But lives must not be risked until we can face a parent or a spouse or a child with a clear answer to the question of why a member of that family had to die. To provide a "symbol" or a "presence" is not good enough.

The expendability factor has increased by being transferred from the specialised, scarce and expensively trained military personnel to the amorphous civilian population. American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century's major wars. In the First World War 5 per cent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 per cent, while in a Third World War 90-95 per cent would be civilians.

War does not ask which of its victims deserves to die and which does not. It is indiscriminate. Innocent as well as guilty fall before it.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

Giap was a master of logistics, but his reputation rests on more than that. His victories were achieved by a patient strategy that he and Ho Chi Minh were convinced would succeed - an unwavering resolve to suffer immense casualties and the near total destruction of their country to defeat any adversary, no matter how powerful.

He's only trying to minimize the casualties. You can't blame him for that." "Tell me what I can blame him for, then." "In this situation?" A note of apology entered his voice. "Being realistic." Kathleen gave him a reproachful glance.

one of the promises we make to one another is that we will try to retrieve our casualties

One of the promises we make to one another is that we will try to retrieve our casualties, try not to abandon our dead to the coyotes.

The death rate among Marines in Iraq has been more than double that of the other services.

Norway surrendered after two months of fighting, which had left 1,335 Norwegians killed or wounded.

We are only the most visible casualties of a silent war, and as they lock collars on our necks and tell us it is for our protection, we know that worse will come.

Every year in this war and that, even in our own cities, countless children are killed, while those who spray the bullets—or plant the roadside bomb, authorize the use of nerve gas, send the drone with the Hellfire missile that strikes the wrong target—shed not a tear, referring to those tender deceased as mere "collateral damage," if they acknowledge

War seldom looks on the faces of its dead

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

Eleven years later. Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.

Individual assignments treat people like interchangeable parts, widgets or screws to be shuffled from drawer to drawer. In combat under this system, new guys showed up one at a time, and often got shot all too quickly.

The opposition remained maddeningly opaque. Intelligence people scratched their heads. A January 25, 2004, count of detainees totaled 9,754. Casualty estimates ran to at least that number. So, essentially, the U.S. and its partners had captured and killed the entire insurgency. Yet the bad guys were still out there.

It was typical of U.S. strategists, then and later, to leave European, North African, and Asian casualties entirely out of account in weighing the deterrent balance. And I don't know of any instance of a president or any civilian official raising this point. In retrospect, that's a startling commentary.

had begun under Roosevelt, Stimson, and Leahy when, as their subordinate General LeMay put it, "we scorched and boiled and baked179 to death more people in Tokyo on that night of March 9–10 than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined

For every ton of bombs dropped on England in the nine months of the Blitz, England and the United States, mainly England, eventually dropped a hundred tons of bombs on German cities. More than half a million Germans—civilians—were killed.

Yet the march toward freedom is not without its hazards or its casualties and the threats of violence aimed at Iraqis who participate in the election will be dealt with accordingly.

There's been an increase in the number of Iraqis in training, but more Americans are dying and violence is increasing.

When it comes to civilian deaths, violent hostilities play no favorites.