Quotes About Conflict

Against the certainties of the American command, the truth never stood a chance.

Do you truly hate them? Or is it more the feeling you get when you're around them that you hate?

remember the two signatures of modern war: (1) You never win, exactly; you claim victory. (2) Perception is paramount.

Never mind that this fellow had been busy that morning shooting scores of people in cold blood,9 the image alone told a simpler, more brutal story, one brandished enthusiastically by the war's opponents.

Sitting cross-legged on the rug, puffing on a pipe, wearing a fat gold Rolex on his wrist, Khamenei asked the colonel, "If we were to release all of you now, without any conditions, how long would it be before you could begin to supply us again with spare parts for our military forces?

The Viet Cong were not the idealistic warriors of American antiwar propaganda; they were vicious. They relied on terror.

At the very least, Vietnam should stand as a permanent caution against going to war for any but the most immediate, direct, and vital national interest, or to prevent genocide or wider conflict, and then only in concert with other countries.

China is traditionally Vietnam's enemy. [Vietnam] had been kicking [invaders] out for millennia. And we were just the latest.

The United States had complete control of the air over all of Vietnam, and could presumably deliver a decisive blow at will. The failure to do so was blamed on the very notion of "limited war." America was fighting with one hand—or so the story went.

You could send in your bleeding-heart do-gooders, you could hold hands and pray and sing hootenanny songs and invoke the great gods CNN and BBC, but the only way to finally open the roads to the big-eyed babies was to show up with more guns. And in this real world, nobody had more or better guns than America. If the good-hearted ideals of humankind were to prevail, then they needed men who could make it happen.

More bombs had been dropped in North and South Vietnam by the beginning of 1968 than had been dropped over Europe in all of World War II, three times more than were dropped in the Pacific theater, and twice as many as in Korea.

The Battle of Hue would be the bloodiest of the Vietnam War, and a turning point not just in that conflict, but in American history. When it was over, debate concerning the war in the United States was never again about winning, only about how to leave. And never again would Americans fully trust their leaders.

The Americans landed in Vietnam, were killed in Vietnam, and others have continued to come here without having good reasons.

So for Ho, the point of war was to force the United States to negotiate.

When the New York Times confirmed the truth about Hue on its front page, word was definitely out: trapped marines . . . smoking city . . . five battalions of enemy troops. A huge fight was shaping up inside the old fortress. Suddenly nearly every reporter in the country was trying to get to Hue.

Garrison wrote in his memo to Hoar. "There is no place in Mogadishu we cannot go and be successful in a fight. There are plenty of places we can go and be stupid.

Two hundred and fifty American marines and soldiers were killed, and 1,554 wounded.75 Another 458 ARVN soldiers were killed and an estimated 2,700 wounded. The Front's losses are estimated to have been between 2,400 and 5,000—the difference between the official counts of both sides, both known to lie about such numbers. When

the final toll of the Battle of Hue numbers well over ten thousand, making it by far the bloodiest of the Vietnam War.

You cannot truly win a conflict that you cannot truthfully define.

but the rank and file had sized up the coming fight inside the Citadel as the shit storm to end all shit storms.

She had joined the Viet Cong herself four years earlier, its Young Pioneer Organization.

Nearly everyone had a father or uncles who had fought in World War II or Korea, or both, and many had grandfathers who had fought in World War I. War was stitched deep in the idea of manhood.

One man who had known Lloyd years earlier said flatly that he "hated women.

the rank and file had sized up the coming fight inside the Citadel as the shit storm to end all shit storms.