The American escalation of the war in Laos provoked a response by the Communist forces, which now control more of Laos than ever before.

I gave ‚em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

It’s always interesting about God because it’s like all of the religions in the world say that they pray to the same God, and yet they ask that same one God to divide itself up and agree with this one and fight against that one.

People like to talk about war.

The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists.

You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.

Gains achieved at great cost against our enemy in Afghanistan are reversible.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

The West Bank is essentially imprisoned.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

I don’t think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that’s now history.

War is the business of barbarians.

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

We all recognize that the Mid-east is dissolving into crises, and we know terrorism did not start with 9-11.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there’s no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That’s all crap.

No one doubts that innocent men, women and children have been the victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. And there’s no doubt who is responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated.

It doesn’t take long to become aware of the presence of the CIA in Laos.

Drama usually has some sort of intense conflict.

The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.

In 1949, China declared independence – an event known in Western discourse as ‚the loss of China‘ in the U.S. – with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

In time of war the laws are silent.

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.

The truth of the matter is that Iran is a cancer.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

By very conservative estimates, Turkish repression of Kurds in the 1990s falls in the category of Kosovo. It peaked in the early 1990s; one index is the flight of more than a million Kurds from the countryside to the unofficial Kurdish capital, Diyarbakir, from 1990 to 1994, as the Turkish army was devastating the countryside.

Israel is a pretty crazy state.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

A war is a horrible thing, but it’s also a unifier of countries.

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.

Contention does not usually begin as strife between countries. More often, it starts with an individual, for we can contend within ourselves over simple matters of right and wrong. From there, contention can infect neighbors and nations like a spreading sore.

We also can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis. That’s not leadership; that’s a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately weakens us. It’s the lesson of Vietnam, of Iraq – and we should have learned it by now.

We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon – no alternative.

The Iranians have shot down drones. They tried to destroy the Saudi oil fields. They tried to storm our embassy. So, when my Democratic friends say we need appeasement, well appeasement hasn’t worked. And I think that we’ve learned, with respect to Iran, that weakness invites the wolves.

‚In Utero‘ was the first time I’d made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear ‚Pennyroyal Tea.‘

Politics is the womb in which war develops.

The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States – and war is what they got.

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it’s likely to harm them.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

Laws are silent in time of war.

Part of the population of Laos lives in urban centers, Vientiane being the largest.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

A siege is an act of war.

When I arrived in Laos and found young Americans living there, out of free choice, I was surprised. After only a week, I began to have a sense of the appeal of the country and its people – along with despair about its future.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that’s their gift.

War is what happens when language fails.