Talk:United States Armed Forces

Draft

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength our gallant and disciplined army? These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of those may be turned against our liberties, without making us weaker or stronger for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty. ~ Abraham Lincoln

All the races, religions, and nationalities of the world were represented in the armed forces of this nation, as they were in the body of our population. No man's patriotism was impugned or service questioned because of his racial origin, his political opinion, or his religious convictions. Immigrants and sons of immigrants... fought side by side with those who descended from the countries which were our allies, with the sons of equatorial Africa, and with the red men of our own aboriginal population, all of them equally proud of the name Americans. ~ Calvin Coolidge

I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. ~ Smedley Butler

We need to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land. They're not people whose names we don't know and cultures we don't understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable. The enemy is CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable. It's the insurance companies who deny us health care when it's profitable. It's the banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemies are not five thousand miles away. They are right here at home. ~ Michael Prysner

We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. ~ Huey Newton

The current strength of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are about 510,000 and 180,000 respectively. In addition, there are about 800,000 National Guard and Reserve troops available to the Army and Marine Corps. Though these numbers suggest the U.S. has bout 1.5 million total ground troops available, the U.S. has many commitments that limits strength for any single military event. Considering the needs for institutional support, U.S. commitments to Europe and Korea, and the rest, retraining, and re-equipping of forces, the U.S. probably has no more than 250,000 active duty troops available for a ground war. If the National Guard and Reserves were fully mobilized, then the U.S. could potentially put a million soldiers in the field for a campaign. ~ Bruce W. Terry

The world is a safer and a better place when the United States is the strongest military power in the world. ~ Marco Rubio

America still fields what is arguably the most disciplined, humane military force in history, a model of restraint compared with ancient armies that wallowed in the spoils of war or even more-modern armies that heedlessly killed civilians and prisoners. ~ Newsweek

I hope the young American soldier, with whom we are becoming so familiar in the street, the tube and the omnibus, has found us agreeable as we have found him. ~ Alfred George Gardiner

You don't need to be 'straight' to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight. ~ Barry Goldwater

The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle between two dramatically different systems. Under one, a small band of fanatics demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology, condemns women to subservience, and marks unbelievers for murder. The other system is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God. ~ George W. Bush

Soldiers and the democratic fallen, now occupy a prominent place in a long tradition of American liberators, extending from the American Revolution... The Civil War was a touchstone in this legacy. Academic historians write that it was about sectionalism... Lincoln knew what lay at its core... Slavery 'constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war'... Soldiers fought to preserve the Union, but also to end human bondage. ~ Joseph M. Skelly

When I called our troops into action, I did so with complete confidence in their courage and skill. And tonight, thanks to them, we are winning. ~ George W. Bush

The men and women of our armed forces have delivered a message now clear to every enemy of the United States. Even 7,000 miles away, across oceans and continents, on mountaintops and in caves; you will not escape the justice of this nation. ~ George W. Bush

If the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army. ~ Frederick Douglass

We have the finest force the world has ever known, because we have the best people. ~ Ashton Carter

I must speak of the services of the men and women who rallied to the colors of the republic... America realizes and appreciates the services rendered, the sacrifices made, and the sufferings endured... All were brave. All were self-sacrificing... The four million defenders on land and sea were worthy of the best traditions of a people... They commanded our pride. They have our gratitude, which must have genuine expression. ~ Warren G. Harding

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. ~ Abraham Lincoln

We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated fascism... We were willing to do it, glad to do it... All in the interest of preserving the rights of people, and when all those conflicts were over? What did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, ‍'‍Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us‍'‍? No... We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced... Did we ask for any land? No. The only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead, and that is the kind of nation we are. ~ Colin Powell

The military is not a thing. It's a group of committed patriots willing to sacrifice everything on our behalf. It works only because of the people in it. As cool as the hardware is, and we have cool hardware, as cool as the machines and weapons and satellites are, ultimately it comes down to remarkable people. ~ Barack Obama

In America, there’s a reverence for soldiers. One is constantly reminded of their courage, their sacrifice. Soldiers have an implied halo of selflessness, they move with a dignified bearing. Flight attendants upgrade uniformed soldiers to first class, restaurants offer veteran discounts, strangers shake their hands. ~ Anonymous

These are our kids... They're good kids... Joining the army or the Marine Corps does not make you into a crypto-alcoholic Nazi, it makes you into a child of America who is doing a job for his country. ~ Tom Clancy

The military has always been a very introspective organization. One of the reasons why the army is so progressive is its always examining itself. The army is always looking for better ways to do its job... The army led America in integration... The army recognized early on that, you know, black people are pretty much the same as white people; they just tend to be a little bit darker. They make just as good soldiers. ~ Tom Clancy

Soldiers. You are about to return to your homes and your friends... I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country. I wish it might be more generally and universally understood what the country is now engaged in. We have, as all will agree, a free government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Your sons and daughters have served you well and faithfully with the calm, deliberated determined fighting spirit of the American soldier, based upon a tradition of historical truth as against the fanaticism of an enemy supported only by mythological fiction. Their spiritual strength and power has brought us through to victory. ~ Douglas MacArthur

America and our allies are fighting a new kind of war against a different kind of enemy. This conflict places great demands on the men and women of our armed forces, including our Guard and Reserve. They've met every test; they've risen to every challenge. ~ George W. Bush

The essence of U.S. military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, drop bombs, with only a few hours' notice, at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet. No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. ~ David Graeber

America's military superiority remains unrivaled; full stop... The U.S. dominates across land, sea, air and space. ~ Ian Bremmer

It is always the job of American soldiers to protect civilians before protecting themselves. In doing so they protect themselves better than if they did not. It may be counter-intuitive, but it’s straight-forward, by-the-book. ~ Michael Totten

When we put our differences aside and we declared war on the people that harmed us... It made me feel amazing. It made me feel patriotic, it made me feel strong, it made me love this country in a way that in all my years I'd never really loved... That's the America we all dream of. That's the America that we all want, this America that's strong, and powerful and strikes back when necessary. The sleeping giant that we were taught about in our history books, ready to just to just be the super-power that we need to be and having the best army in the world. ~ Steven Williams

If there has ever been an engine for peace in the world, it is the United States military. ~ Rush Limbaugh

To the extent that Americans think about these bases at all, we generally assume they’re essential to national security and global peace. Our leaders have claimed as much since most of them were established during World War II and the early days of the Cold War. As a result, we consider the situation normal and accept that US military installations exist in staggering numbers in other countries, on other peoples’ land. On the other hand, the idea that there would be foreign bases on US soil is unthinkable. ~ David Vine

At the heart of this system is the United States of America, the world's only existing empire today. The first time in the history of humanity that you have just had a single empire, so dominant, whose military budget is higher than the military budgets of the next 15 countries put together, and whose military-industrial complex itself is the eleventh largest economic entity in the world. This is the reality we live in, and this is the reality which confronts us in different ways. ~ Tariq Ali

A

• We have large armies, well disciplined and appointed, with commanders inferior to none in military skill, and superior in activity and zeal. We are furnished with arsenals and stores beyond our most sanguine expectations... You have now in the field armies sufficient to repel the whole force of your enemies and their base and mercenary auxiliaries. The hearts of your soldiers beat high with the spirit of freedom; they are animated with the justice of their cause, and while they grasp their swords can look up to Heaven for assistance. Your adversaries are composed of wretches who laugh at the rights of humanity, who turn religion into derision, and would, for higher wages, direct their swords against their leaders or their country. Go on, then, in your generous enterprise, with gratitude to Heaven for past, success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory.
  • Samuel Adams, speech about the Declaration of Independence (1 August 1776)

• Let's discuss the world. To answer the question, "is globalisation possible without God", the simple answer is "yes". Globalisation is after all itself a code word, a mask, for not using the C-word, capitalism. Globalisation is basically the latest phase of expanding capitalism. This not something which is neutral, this is a capitalism that has its rules: it has its economic rules, it has its political rules, it has its cultural rules and it has its military rules. It is a system. At the heart of this system is the United States of America, the world's only existing empire today. The first time in the history of humanity that you have just had a single empire, so dominant, whose military budget is higher than the military budgets of the next 15 countries put together, and whose military-industrial complex itself is the eleventh largest economic entity in the world. This is the reality we live in, and this is the reality which confronts us in different ways.
  • Tariq Ali, 10th Globalisation lecture, VRPO.

• In America, there’s a reverence for soldiers. One is constantly reminded of their courage, their sacrifice. Soldiers have an implied halo of selflessness, they move with a dignified bearing. Flight attendants upgrade uniformed soldiers to first class, restaurants offer veteran discounts, strangers shake their hands and say, 'Thank you for your service'.
  • Anonymous, "How I learned to stop worrying and love the Iranian army", The Guardian (23 July 2015), United Kingdom

• On defense and homeland security, the story appears better on the surface. The president has increased military spending (albeit at the cost of heaping piles of debt). He has focused on modernizing US forces and raising pay for our troops. And he has made securing the country and the border one of the highest priorities of his presidency. In reality, Trump has been a disaster for the Pentagon. He refers to leaders of the military not as nonpartisan defenders of the republic, but as "his generals," whom he can move around as he pleases, like knights on a chess board. It's tough to listen to him talk like this. Some of these leaders have lost children in the defense of the nation. They have answered the knock at the door from men and women standing there to tell them the most heart-wrenching news a parent can hear, that their child is gone forever. Yet they are on the receiving end of orders barked by a man who cowered at the thought of military service. The patriots who are still in uniform will not come out and say it because they don't want to openly disagree with their commander, but many are appalled by Trump's lack of decorum and his imprudent leadership of our armed forces. Time and again, he has put our armed forces in a terrible position by trying to pull the military into political debates or using it to demonstrate his own toughness. This began before he entered office. As a candidate, Trump suggested the military and intelligence agencies embrace torture as a tactic against America's enemies, vowing, "I would bring back waterboarding. And I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding." Analysts pointed out that such statements are used by terrorists for propaganda, helping them recruit supporters by touting America's supposed cruelty. It feeds their narrative, putting US forces in danger overseas. Fortunately, the president was persuaded to drop the subject early in his term by the incoming team, who realized Trump's flip-flopping would impact national defense most of all.
  • Anonymous, A Warning (2019), p. 103-104

• When Trump's flip-flopping is about something like new army uniforms ("very expensive," he lamented, but on the other hand, "beautiful"), it is exhausting. When it's about air strikes, it's terrifying. The president's impetuousness poses a danger to our military, the full extent of which will not be known for years. He is more than a minor headache for the Pentagon. He is a blinding migraine. Those who have served at the highest levels of the Pentagon, who have sat with Trump in moments of decision, know all too well. On a weekly basis, they shield men and women in uniform from the knowledge, as best they can, of just how undisciplined the commander in chief is above them and how he treats the US military like it's part of a big game of Battleship. Our warriors risk everything to venture into the darkest corners of the world to hunt those who would do us harm. They deserve better for their inviolable code of duty than a man lacking a basic moral compass.
  • Anonymous, A Warning (2019), p. 105

• The army goes rolling along!
  • "Army Goes Rolling Along"

• The reason the American Army does so well in war is because war is chaos and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
  • Anonymous saying of the Nazi military, as quoted in Lacey, Jim (April 15, 2003). "Nothing Went According To Plan". TIME. Retrieved on 23 July 2019. 

B

• The best way for the United States to prepare for the future is to husband its economic strength and respond militarily only if a serious threat develops. Otherwise, Washington should seek to accommodate, rather than combat.
  • Doug Bandow, "Is China Really That Dangerous?" (25 May 2016), The National Interest

• I`m a registered Democrat. I tend to vote Democrat. It`s an odd thing to be a Democrat who works with the military, which is overwhelming Republican. I`m comfortable in that; in that milieu because I like to be the skeptic in the room. I like to be the contrarian. And if you`re going to be a contrarian in the military environment, you`re probably going to have to be a Democrat. But that`s the family background I come out of. I had a grandfather who ran as a Progressive.
  • Thomas Barnett, interview with Brian Lamb (May 2004), C-SPAN

• Let's make no mistake about this: Congress' choice to keep investing in a massive, ineffective and absurdly expensive war machine has nothing to do with "national security" as most people understand it, or "defense" as the dictionary defines it. U.S. society does face critical threats to our security, including the climate crisis, systemic racism, erosion of voting rights, gun violence, grave inequalities and the corporate hijacking of political power. But one problem we fortunately do not have is the threat of attack or invasion by a rampant global aggressor or, in fact, by any other country at all... If the public is ever to have any impact on this dysfunctional and deadly money-go-round, we must learn to see through the fog of propaganda that masks self-serving corruption behind red, white and blue bunting, and allows the military brass to cynically exploit the public's natural respect for brave young men and women who are ready to risk their lives to defend our country. In the Crimean War, the Russians called British troops "lions led by donkeys." That is an accurate description of today's U.S. military.
  • Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Congress loots the Treasury for U.S. war machine — while bickering over Build Back Better, Salon, (December 7, 2021)

• Maintaining a war machine that outspends the 12 or 13 next largest militaries in the world combined actually makes us less safe, as each new administration inherits the delusion that the United States' overwhelmingly destructive military power can, and therefore should, be used to confront any perceived challenge to U.S. interests anywhere in the world — even when there is clearly no military solution and when many of the underlying problems were caused by past misapplications of U.S. military power in the first place. While the international challenges we face in this century require a genuine commitment to international cooperation and diplomacy, Congress allocates only $58 billion, less than 10 percent of the Pentagon budget, to the diplomatic corps of our government: the State Department. Even worse, both Democratic and Republican administrations keep filling top diplomatic posts with officials indoctrinated and steeped in policies of war and coercion, with scant experience and meager skills in the peaceful diplomacy we so desperately need. This only perpetuates a failed foreign policy based on false choices between economic sanctions that UN officials have compared to medieval sieges, coups that destabilize countries and regions for decades, and wars and bombing campaigns that kill millions of people and leave cities in rubble, like Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
  • Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Congress loots the Treasury for U.S. war machine — while bickering over Build Back Better, Salon, (December 7, 2021)

• May thy service united ne'er sever, but hold to the colors so true! The Army and Navy forever! Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!
  • Thomas á Becket, Sr., "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" (1843)

• You'll go quitely to boot camp
  They'll shoot you dead, make you a man
  Don't you worry, it's for a cause
  Feeding global corporations' claws.
  • Jello Biafra, We've Got a Bigger Problem Now, In God We Trust, Inc. (1981).

• God bless our troops.
  • Joe Biden, Weekly presidential address (21 November 2015)

• Let tyrants shake their iron rod, and slavery clank her galling chains. We fear them not, we trust in God...

  God forever reigns. The foe comes on with haughty stride. Our troops advance with martial noise. Their veterans flee before our youth, and generals yield to beardless boys.

  • William Billings, "Chester" (1770), The New England Psalm Singer

• One of the most important things the United States did in the aftermath of World War II was to help returning veterans.
  • Earl Blumenauer (18 December 2007), "House Restores Oregon Veterans Provisions Cut by Senate". Press Release. Congressman Earl Blumenauer's Website, Representing the 3rd Congressional District of Oregon. United States House of Representatives.

• America's military superiority remains unrivaled; full stop...

  The U.S. dominates across land, sea, air and space. America's Middle East misadventures gave the U.S. military a black eye, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan speak more to the changing nature of warfare than declining U.S. military superiority. Terrorists and guerrilla fighters give conventional military powers fits by design. The U.S. must ultimately learn to scale down to better meet those challenges. Nevertheless, while conventional military strength might not deter terrorists, it still does a terrific job of deterring hostile nations.

  • Ian Bremmer, "These Are the 5 Reasons Why the U.S. Remains the World's Only Superpower: Why Washington can still claim global primacy in the 21st century" (28 May 2015), Time

• If your country needs you, you should be right there, that is the way I felt when I was young, and that's the way I feel today.
  • Frank Buckles, on service in the U.S. Army, as quoted in The Knoxville News

• [His response to a question about his concerns regarding the “militarization” of foreign policy] We all ought to be concerned. Defense and military leaders are not shy about highlighting the debilitating tendency— across administrations of both parties—to invert the roles of force and diplomacy. We’ve all quoted Secretary of Defense Bob Gates’ line about the military having more musicians than we have Foreign Service officers, and Jim Mattis’ point about needing to “buy more ammunition” if we continue to underinvest in diplomacy. But that hasn’t made much of a dent, I’m afraid. Of course, we ought to ensure that our military is stronger than anyone else’s, that our tool of last resort is potent and durable. And of course, force or the threat of force has an important role to play in the conduct of diplomacy. We’ve all benefited from having the U.S. military focus the minds of those who sat across the table from us... But time and time again, we’ve seen how overreliance on military tools can lead us into policy quicksand. Time and time again, we’ve fallen into the trap of overusing—or prematurely using—force. That comes at much greater cost in American blood and treasure, and tends to make diplomacy a distorted and under-resourced afterthought. In the forever wars of the post-9/11 era, the “great inversion” [of force and diplomacy] also tended to thrust State Department professionals into nation-building roles that are beyond the capacity of American diplomats, or any other external power. While our colleagues served with courage and ingenuity, the fact remains that we’re the American Foreign Service, not the British Colonial Service.
  • William J. Burns, The Diplomacy Imperative: A Q&A with William J. Burns, The Foreign Service Journal, May 2019

• As Commander in Chief, I can report to you: Our armed forces fought with honor and valor.
  • George H. W. Bush, address to the U.S. Congress (27 February 1991)

• When I called our troops into action, I did so with complete confidence in their courage and skill. And tonight, thanks to them, we are winning the war...

  The men and women of our armed forces have delivered a message now clear to every enemy of the United States. Even 7,000 miles away, across oceans and continents, on mountaintops and in caves; you will not escape the justice of this nation.

  • George W. Bush, State of the Union Address (29 January 2002)

• To all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces...

  The peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you. That trust is well placed. The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the honorable and decent spirit of the American military. In this conflict, America faces an enemy who has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality...

  I know that the families of our military are praying that all those who serve will return safely and soon. Millions of Americans are praying with you for the safety of your loved ones and for the protection of the innocent. For your sacrifice, you have the gratitude and respect of the American people. And you can know that our forces will be coming home as soon as their work is done...

  The dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail...

  God bless our country and all who defend her.

  • George W. Bush, invasion of Iraq speech (19 March 2003)

• America and our allies are fighting a new kind of war against a different kind of enemy. This conflict places great demands on the men and women of our armed forces, including our Guard and Reserve. They've met every test; they've risen to every challenge. The war also places demands on those of us in government. We took an oath to protect our country. We have a solemn responsibility to support the service men and women who defend us in the field of battle.
  • George W. Bush, remarks during signing of defense bill (5 August 2004)

• Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.
  • George W. Bush, Address to the Nation (10 January 2007)

• From Bunker Hill to Baghdad, the men and women of American Armed Forces have been devoted guardians of our democracy.
  • George W. Bush, radio address (1 November 2008)

• The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle between two dramatically different systems. Under one, a small band of fanatics demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology, condemns women to subservience, and marks unbelievers for murder. The other system is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God and that liberty and justice light the path to peace. This is the belief that gave birth to our nation. And in the long run, advancing this belief is the only practical way to protect our citizens.
  • George W. Bush, farewell speech to the nation from the White House (15 January 2009)

• I miss being the commander in chief, and that's an easy question to answer. I love our military...

  I love the military of the United States, and we are a lucky nation to have people who volunteer to serve.

  • George W. Bush, interview on Today (9 November 2010), with Matt Lauer.

• War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. ... A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people.
  • Smedley Butler in War is a racket (1935)

• Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. ... This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? ... Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
  • Smedley Butler in War is a racket (1935)

• I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
  • Smedley Butler in Maverick Marine General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History (2014)

Heidi Beirich, “Alarming Incidents of White Supremacy in the Military – How to Stop It?”, Congress.gov, (February 11, 2020)

• The Armed Services’ own soldiers know that white supremacy in the ranks is a serious problem. A Military Times poll in 2017 found that nearly 25 percent of actively serving military personnel have encountered white nationalism and racism in the Armed Forces. Active duty troops were about 1.3 million at the time, meaning some 325,000 soldiers had encountered white nationalism in some form. Follow up surveys in 2018 and 2019 by the same publication found substantially the same troubling results.
  • p.4

• Replying to Ellison, the Defense Department said that it had received “27 reports of extremist activity (domestic) by Service members over the past five years.” Military officials, the letter continued, had investigated 25 of these reports; ultimately, 18 service members from across the military had been disciplined or forced out of the armed forces. The nature of the extremism of the troops in question was not documented.
  • p.4

• In a statement, a Pentagon spokeswoman, Major Carla Gleason of the Air Force, said: “The DoD uses a multi-level approach to learn as much as possible about potential new soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines so we can assess whether they should be extended the privilege to serve in the military. While we can't guarantee that every person who enters the service will be free from holding extremist thoughts, various screening tools provide us the best opportunity to identify those who do not share our values.”
  • p.9

• In the Military Times’ 2018 poll, which included responses from nearly 900 active-duty troops, 22 percent of service members who participated said they had seen signs of white nationalism or racist ideology within the armed forces. Among minority service members polled, incidents of racism and racist ideology increased from 42 percent in 2017 to more than half those surveyed in 2018. Respondents cited casual use of racial slurs and antisemitic language, display of the Confederate flag despite complaints from other troops, swastikas drawn in bathrooms in combat zones, and tattoos known to be connected with white supremacy. It should be noted that were this behavior to occur in a civilian workplace, such incidents would be seen as contributing to a hostile workplace environment. The paper reported that an anonymous service member wrote, “I have several colleagues who have said they are ‘alt-right,’ and that they had made, “very clear statements of strong hatred against blacks, Muslims, Hispanics and immigrants in general. They punish others by withholding favorable assignments, actions, etc.”
  • p.12

• A 2009 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report further warned that the combination of the election of the first African American president, a downturn in the economy, and an influx of unemployed vets returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan were potential flashpoints, and that military personnel and veterans were being targeted by far-right extremist groups. Unfortunately, this report created a political firestorm among politicians, conservative commentators and veterans groups. As a result, it was rescinded by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, and the Obama administration subsequently did little to address the issue.
  • p.13

• Then-Defense Secretary William Perry used even stronger language to describe the intent of the updated regulation. “Department of Defense policy leaves no room for racist and extremist activities in the military,” Perry stated. “We must -- and we shall -- make every effort to erase bigotry, racism, and extremism from the military. Extremis activity compromises fairness, good order, and discipline. The armed forces, which defend the nation and its values, must exemplify those values beyond question.”
  • p.14

• There has long been bipartisan consensus that allowing white supremacists in the military is unacceptable and dangerous to the American public the Armed Forces are sworn to protect. As Republican Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) wrote in a letter to the Pentagon in 2006, “Military extremists present an elevated threat both to their fellow servicemembers and the public. We witnessed with Timothy McVeigh that today’s racist extremist may become tomorrow’s domestic terrorist. Of all the institutions in our society, the U.S. military is the absolute last place extremists can be permitted to exist.”
  • p.16

• It is unclear how the military shares information on extremists with other branches and other federal agencies, including the FBI. When the services become aware of an extremist in their ranks, what happens to that information after that soldier is dismissed? How do the services alert each other when they find someone enlisted with extremist views? How do they investigate the networks in the military that the white supremacist may have been involved in or recruited from? How do the branches and investigative services share information white supremacists? A look at how the services interact with and share information with each other on extremists and with the FBI and Department of Justice once the service member leaves the military is warranted.
  • p.21

C

• We stand watch...

  Stand alert...

  We're doing something right. We have the finest force the world has ever known, because we have the best people. Now, it's an all-volunteer force so I have to compete with the rest of the economy for the best Americans and I have to think ahead. How do I compete? How do I make us an attractive place to be? So, I need to be constantly looking forward to the future...

  So, there is some reform to be done. But, in the people area it's a matter of keeping a wonderful strength, which is the all-volunteer force, strong in what is a competitive labor market...

  In this institution, it's important that we be apart from the political process. That's our tradition in the United States.

  • Ashton Carter, interview with Charlie Rose (February 2016)

• [A]s the government of the United States is 'Of the people, for the people, and by the people,' it is quite in order to invite citizens who control in military matters of the nation, as they do in other important national affairs, to 'know thyself.'
  • Anda R. Chaffee, as quoted in The Valor of Ignorance (1909), by Homer Lea, pp. xi–xii

• The military has always been a very introspective organization...

  One of the reasons why the army is so progressive is its always examining itself. The army is always looking for better ways to do its job...

  The army led America in integration...

  The army recognized early on that, you know, black people are pretty much the same as white people; they just tend to be a little bit darker. They make just as good soldiers...

  These are our kids...

  They're good kids...

  Joining the army or the Marine Corps does not make you into a crypto-alcoholic Nazi, it makes you into a child of America who is doing a job for his country...

  They're our kids.

  • Tom Clancy, "In Depth with Tom Clancy" (3 February 2002), C-SPAN

• Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four-hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt.
  • Eldridge Cleaver, as quoted in Soul on Ice (1968), Part II: "Rallying Round the Flag"

• The all-volunteer military has worked, and we should not do anything that undermines it because it has provided a solid core of people who are willing to serve our country.
  • Hillary Clinton, CNN town hall meeting (February 2016)

• Here's a land with a million soldiers, That's if we should need 'em. We'll fight for freedom!
  • George M. Cohan, "You're a Grand Old Flag" (1906)

• Muslims served in the U.S. military under the command of General George Washington, who was Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the American War for Independence. Rosters of soldiers serving in Washington's Army lists names like Bampett Muhammad, who fought for the Virginia Line between the years 1775 and 1783. Another one of Washington's soldiers, Yusuf Ben Ali, was a North African Arab who worked as an aide to General Thomas Sumter of South Carolina. Peter Buckminster, who fought in Boston, is perhaps Washington's most distinguished Muslim American soldier. Buckminster fired the gun that killed British Major General John Pitcairn at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Years after this famous battle, Peter changed his last name to 'Salaam', the Arabic word meaning 'peace'. Peter Salaam later reenlisted in the Continental Army to serve in the Battle of Saratoga and the Battle of Stony Point. If Washington had a problem with Muslims serving in his Army, he would not have allowed Muhammad, Ali and Salaam to represent and serve non-Muslim Americans. By giving these Muslims the honor of serving America, Washington made it clear that a person did not have to be of a certain religion or have a particular ethnic background to be an American patriot...

  Muslims played historic roles during the Civil War, a turning point in American history...

  Think about the following question. Whose side would George Washington be on? The Muslim citizens serving in the U.S. military, or the mob of bigots who threaten American citizens with violence at their place of worship?

  • Craig Considine, Saluting Muslim American Patriots

• All the races, religions, and nationalities of the world were represented in the armed forces of this nation, as they were in the body of our population. No man's patriotism was impugned or service questioned because of his racial origin, his political opinion, or his religious convictions. Immigrants and sons of immigrants from the central European countries fought side by side with those who descended from the countries which were our allies, with the sons of equatorial Africa, and with the red men of our own aboriginal population, all of them equally proud of the name Americans.
  • Calvin Coolidge, Toleration and Liberalism (6 October 1925), American Legion Convention, Omaha, Nebraska.

• We live in fame or go down in flame!
  Hey! Nothing can stop the U.S. Air Force!
  • Robert MacArthur Crawford, The U.S. Air Force (1947)

• The Government Rules by Force, Fraud and Deception. The information blockade starts with the military itself. The military purposely restricts information plus its immense size and bureaucratic complexity means that it is so hard to grasp that political leaders cannot themselves understand the institution they are supposed to command.
  You want proof? Just try reading the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) 2016 report which could not figure out just how much oil the military burns. The GAO concluded: “[C]ongress does not have full visibility over the amount of fuel volume the military services require on an annual basis for their activities…”
  This should not come as a surprise. Since its inception in 1950 or so the modern military has resisted any accounting of costs in violation of Article I, Section 9, of the US Constitution. In 2018 the Pentagon failed its first ever audit. It’s not just about the missing 6.5 trillions dollars, (although that really matters too) it’s that the opaque accounting system is armor — a defensive weapon used to neutralize anyone that wants to understand, let alone oppose, the US government.
  • The Climate Counter-Offensive: Secrecy, Deception and Disarming the Green New Deal, Richard Moser, CounterPunch (June 14, 2019)

D

• And we will turn our motherland into the graveyard of the U.S forces and their families should wait for their dead bodies. The Taliban's war is only for the freedom of Afghanistan from the enemies of Muslims.
  • Mullah Dadullah, Taliban deploy thousands of suicide bombers - commander 02 Apr 2007.

• We will begin the long process of rebuilding the world's greatest military, we will level the playing field in international trade and revitalize American industry, we will give our friends reason to trust us again. Our enemies will have reason to fear us again, and our citizens will have reason to believe again. No, you don't know America, and you don't want to find out the hard way...

  Pray for our troops.

  • Charlie Daniels, "Letter to America's enemies" (15 February 2016), CNS News

• Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters 'U.S.'; let him get an edge on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.
  • Frederick Douglass, whose sons Charles and Lewis served in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1862)

• If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote...

  There is something too mean in looking upon the Negro, when you are in trouble, as a citizen, and when you are free from trouble, as an alien. When this nation was in trouble, in its early struggles, it looked upon the Negro as a citizen. In 1776 he was a citizen. At the time of the formation of the Constitution the Negro had the right to vote in eleven States out of the old thirteen. In your trouble you have made us citizens. In 1812 General Jackson addressed us as citizens; 'fellow-citizens'. He wanted us to fight. We were citizens then! And now, when you come to frame a conscription bill, the Negro is a citizen again. He has been a citizen just three times in the history of this government, and it has always been in time of trouble. In time of trouble we are citizens. Shall we be citizens in war, and aliens in peace? Would that be just?

  • Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants", speech in Boston, Massachusetts (1865)

• We are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic. We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation destroyers. If today we have a country not boiling in an agony of blood, like France, if now we have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage, if the American name is no longer a by-word and a hissing to a mocking earth, if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army who rest in these honored graves all around us.
  • Frederick Douglass, "The Unknown Loyal Dead" (30 May 1871), Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County, Virginia

• Within days of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, on May 2, 2011, it was revealed that the Navy SEAL team executing the mission had used the code name Geronimo for its target.' A May 4 report in the New York Daily News commented, "Along with the unseen pictures of Osama Bin Laden's corpse and questions about what Pakistan knew, intelligence officials' reasons for dubbing the Al Qaeda boss 'Geronimo' remain one of the biggest mysteries of the Black Ops mission." The choice of that code name was not a mystery to the military, which also uses the term "Indian Country" to designate enemy territory and identifies its killing machines and operations with such names as UH-1B/C Iroquois, OH-58D Kiowa, OV-1 Mohawk, OH-6 Cayuse, AH-64 Apache, S-58/H-34 Choctaw, UH-60 Black Hawk, Thunderbird, and Rolling Thunder. The last of these is the military name given to the relentless carpet-bombing of Vietnam peasants in the mid-1960s. There are many other current and recent examples of the persistence of the colonialist and imperialist sensibilities at the core of a military grounded in wars against the Indigenous nations and communities of North America.
  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (2014)

E

• Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
  You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
  Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.
  But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!
  I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle.
  We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, Order of the Day (2 June 1944), a message to troops before the Normandy landings, reported in Franklin Watts, Voices of History (1945), p. 260

• Alexander Hamilton: If we're forced to rely on incompetent state militias for our defense, we may as well start learning French now, Mr. President. A national army binds the country much as a national bank does.
  • Alexander Hamilton as interpreted by Rufus Sewell in John Adams, written by Kirk Ellis, "Part VI: Unnecessary War", (March 16 – April 27, 2008); based on the book by David McCullough

• John Adams: Why on Earth do we need an army when we are preparing for peace?
  • John Adams as interpreted by Paul Giamatti in John Adams, written by Kirk Ellis, "Part VI: Unnecessary War", (March 16 – April 27, 2008); based on the book by David McCullough

F

When I was a kid in the ’50s and ’60s and then older in the ’70s, American pop culture reflected a country familiar enough with its military to make fun of it at times. You had shows like “Gomer Pyle,” or “Hogan’s Heroes,” or “”McHale’s Navy.”
You had works of art like “South Pacific” or novels like “Catch 22″ and even movies like “MASH,” respected the importance of the military and the important things it did that were heroic in the large scale, like World War II, but it was still made of real people with their real foibles.
But we — now we have started to have this artificially reverent view of the military that’s also distant and disengaged. ~ James Fallows

• The growing distance between Americans and the military has even changed the way we think and talk about the armed services, argues “The Atlantic” author James Fallows. In January, Fallows discussed his cover story, “Why Do the Best Soldiers in the World Keep Losing?: The Tragic Decline of the American Military,” with Margaret Warner on the NewsHour:
  When I was a kid in the ’50s and ’60s and then older in the ’70s, American pop culture reflected a country familiar enough with its military to make fun of it at times. You had shows like “Gomer Pyle,” or “Hogan’s Heroes,” or “”McHale’s Navy.”
  You had works of art like “South Pacific” or novels like “Catch 22″ and even movies like “MASH,” respected the importance of the military and the important things it did that were heroic in the large scale, like World War II, but it was still made of real people with their real foibles.
  But we — now we have started to have this artificially reverent view of the military that’s also distant and disengaged.
  • James Fallows, (January 2015); as qtd. in Megan Crigger and Laura Santhanam, “How many Americans have died in U.S. Wars?”, PBS News Hours: Nation, (Updated on May 27, 2019 12:31 PM EDT — Published on May 24, 2015).

• This very big, very dirty secret — that war drives climate change — is carefully guarded. To keep things hush-hush the military is excused from oversight or obligation. This exception to the rule of law has always been the practice but G.W. Bush formalized it demanding language to that effect in the 1997 Kyoto Accords, which he later refused to sign anyway...The complete U.S. military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions calculations includes more than 1,000 U.S. bases in more than 130 countries around the world, it’s 6,000 facilities in the U.S., its aircraft carriers and jet aircraft. Also excluded are its weapons testing and all multilateral operations such as the giant U.S. commanded NATO military alliance and AFRICOM, the U.S. military alliance now blanketing Africa. The provision also exempts U.S./UN-sanctioned activities of “peacekeeping” and “humanitarian relief.”
  • Sara Flounders quoted in: The Climate Counter-Offensive: Secrecy, Deception and Disarming the Green New Deal, Richard Moser, CounterPunch (June 14, 2019)

• The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
  • Thomas L. Friedman, "A Manifesto for the Fast World". New York Times. March 28, 1999. Retrieved on 2010-06-28. 

“Body Composition and Physical Performance: Applications For the Military Services” (1990)

Karl E. Fried, “Body Composition and Physical Performance: Applications For the Military Services”, Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Military Nutrition Research; Marriott BM, Grumstrup-Scott J, editors. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1990.

Specific tests of physical performance, such as the Annual Test Ride, were once useful in the Army; however, today's Army may be too diversified to routinely screen soldiers using realistic combat performance tests. The current U.S. Army Physical Fitness Test assesses primarily aerobic fitness with a 2-mile run test in addition to push-up and sit-up tests; these standards are for retention, not accession, and are more leniently enforced than body fat standards. ~ Karl E. Fried

• The primary intent of physical standards in the military has always been to select soldiers best suited to the physical demands of military service. This standard has usually meant the selection of soldiers who at least looked as though they could carry loads and fight well. Currently, body fat standards are part of the U.S. Army's fitness emphasis to ensure that forces possess the stamina and endurance to fight in extreme climatic and terrain environments (Study of the Military Services Physical Fitness, 1981).
  For most of the past century, weight-for-height has been a key physical discriminator of a recruit's fitness for military service, but until recently, these standards were used only to exclude underweight candidates.
• Some physical standards have changed easily with the need for soldiers, which suggests that what may be portrayed as a soldierly characteristic may not be solidly rooted in combat necessity. Height is an example. European monarchs prided themselves on their tall soldiers; it was also convenient to have men of about the same height for drill and ceremony. Some eugenicists claimed that criminals tended to be shorter than the rest of the population (Baxter, 1875), and a retired military surgeon proposed that physical characteristics could identify future heroes (Foster et al., 1967). Thus, the minimum height for U.S. soldiers was 66 inches early in the nineteenth century and has progressively lowered, with the least stringent requirements (no minimum height standard during part of the Civil War) coinciding with national emergencies when new recruits were in greater demand.
• Specific tests of physical performance, such as the Annual Test Ride, were once useful in the Army; however, today's Army may be too diversified to routinely screen soldiers using realistic combat performance tests. The current U.S. Army Physical Fitness Test assesses primarily aerobic fitness with a 2-mile run test in addition to push-up and sit-up tests; these standards are for retention, not accession, and are more leniently enforced than body fat standards.

G

The (Communist) "Daily Worker" of July 13, 1953 said that comics play the conscious role of:
"...Brutalizing American youth, the better to prepare them for military service in implementing our government's aims of world domination, and to accept the atrocities now being perpetrated by American soldiers and airmen in Korea under the flag of the United Nations. ~ William Gaines

• The (Communist) "Daily Worker" of July 13, 1953 said that comics play the conscious role of:
  "...Brutalizing American youth], the better to prepare them for military service in implementing our government's aims of world domination, and to accept the atrocities now being perpetrated by American soldiers and airmen in Korea under the flag of the United Nations."
  • William Gaines, "Are You a Red Dupe?", The Haunt of Fear, EC Comics, (August 1954)

• I hope the young American soldier, with whom we are becoming so familiar in the street, the tube and the omnibus, has found us agreeable as we have found him.
  • Alfred George Gardiner, Leaves in the Wind, p. 97

• Soldiers, the noblest band that ever trod the earth, died to make this camp a camp of glory and of liberty forever.
  • James A. Garfield, "Don't Pitch Your Tent Among the Dead" (October 1879)

• The United States is on pace to spend over $7 trillion over the next ten years for the Pentagon. To put that number in perspective, the U.S. spends more each year on the military than China, Russia, India, the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and Australia combined. While Republicans and Democrats are in sharp disagreements over the much smaller Build Back Better legislation, there is largely a bipartisan consensus when it comes to the military budget and foreign military intervention...
  • Amy Goodman, “The War Party”: Jeremy Scahill on How U.S. Militarism Unifies Democrats & Republicans, Democracy Now! (24 November 2021)

• The U.S. military, unlike any other, maintains a doctrine of global power projection: that it should have the ability, through roughly 800 overseas military bases, to intervene with deadly force absolutely anywhere on the planet. In a way, though, land forces are secondary; at least since World War II, the key to U.S. military doctrine has always been a reliance on air power. The United States has fought no war in which it did not control the skies, and it has relied on aerial bombardment far more systematically than any other military-in its recent occupation of Iraq, for instance, even going so far as to bomb residential neighborhoods of cities ostensibly under its own control. The essence of U.S. military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, drop bombs, with only a few hours' notice, at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet. No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. In fact, a case could well be made that it is this very power that holds the entire world monetary system, organized around the dollar, together.
  • David Graeber, Debt: The 5000 Years, pp. 365-366

• Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.
  • Barry Goldwater, statement of 10 June 1993, as quoted in "Goldwater Backs Gay Troops" in The New York Times (11 June 1993); also quoted in Barry Goldwater (1995), by Robert Alan Goldberg, p. 332

• You don't need to be 'straight' to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.
  • Barry Goldwater, as quoted in Barry Goldwater (1995), by Robert Alan Goldberg, p. 332

• War has made us a nation of great power and intelligence. We have but little to do to preserve peace, happiness and prosperity at home, and the respect of other nations. Our experience ought to teach us the necessity of the first; our power secures the latter.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

• Every major U.S. war of the last several decades has begun the same way: the U.S. government fabricates an inflammatory, emotionally provocative lie which large U.S. media outlets uncritically treat as truth while refusing at air questioning or dissent, thus inflaming primal anger against the country the U.S. wants to attack. That’s how we got the Vietnam War (North Vietnam attacks U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin); the Gulf War (Saddam ripped babies from incubators); and, of course, the war in Iraq (Saddam had WMDs and formed an alliance with Al Qaeda).
• This was exactly the tactic used on February 23, when the narrative shifted radically in favor of those U.S. officials who want regime change operations in Venezuela... they vehemently stated that the trucks were set on fire, on purpose, by President Nicolas Maduro’s forces.
  • Glenn Greenwald: NYT’s Exposé on the Lies About Burning Aid Trucks in Venezuela Shows How U.S. Government and Media Spread Pro-War Propaganda, The Intercept, (10 March 2019)

H

• Anchors Aweigh, my boys! Anchors Aweigh! Farewell...

  Sail on to victory and sink their bones to Davy Jones', hurray!

  • John Hagan, "Anchors Aweigh" (1997)

• In the first place, the American soldier in time of peace is very much like every other type of American citizen . . . he becomes a soldier, and he remains a soldier, for what he can get out of it. Just as soon as he decides that he can get more out of civil life than he can out of the Army, then he is going to refuse to enlist or to reenlist.
  • Johnson Hagood, Circular Relative to Pay of Officers and Enlisted Men of the Army (1907), Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, p. 8, quoted in "A Historical Perspective on Today’s Recruiting Crisis" (2023), by Brian McAllister Linn, The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters, p. 10

• I must speak of the services of the men and women who rallied to the colors of the Republic in the World War. America realizes and appreciates the services rendered, the sacrifices made, and the sufferings endured. There shall be no distinctions between those who knew the perils and glories of the battlefront or the dangers of the sea, and those who were compelled to serve behind the lines, or those who constituted the great reserve of a grand army which awaited the call in camps at home. All were brave. All were self-sacrificing. All were sharers of those ideals which sent our boys twice armed to war...

  Worthy sons and daughters these. Fit successors to those who christened our banners in the immortal beginning. Worthy sons of those who saved the Union and nationality when civil war wiped out the ambiguity from the Constitution. Ready sons of those who drew the sword for humanity's sake the first time in the world in 1898. The four million defenders on land and sea were worthy of the best traditions of a people never warlike in peace and never pacifist in war. They commanded our pride. They have our gratitude, which must have genuine expression. It's not only a duty; it's a privilege to see that the sacrifices made shall be requited, and that those still suffering from casualties and visibilities shall be abundantly aided and restored to the highest capabilities of citizenship and its enjoyments.

  • Warren G. Harding, The American Soldier (1920).

• Unlike with other armies of the world who pledge to defend their monarch or their homeland, our oath of service links our military to the protection and defense of the Constitution and the obedience to the President under the condition of adherence to orders. In effect, through that oath the U.S. military defends our people's security while also defending ideas, ideals and the rule of law. Throughout a career, every soldier, from private to general, undergoes training in history, legal processes and values. That training complements what we do on rifle ranges or in field exercises. Soldiers have terrific skills, and they are thinking protectors of the American way of life. I was in combat for more than three years of my career; during that time, I saw some horrible things and many of those revisit me in dreams. There is evil in man, and in battle. But in the U.S. military; while there have been occasion where soldiers needed to be disciplined for violating the laws or the regulations -- overwhelmingly and consistently the actions of my brothers and sisters in arms has made me very proud...

  I know our soldiers, and I know our military heritage and the American way of war through study and experience. When well-led and well trained, Americans who wear our country's cloth are pure in spirit and decisive in purpose. They will go where they are sent, fight where they go, and do everything to win where they fight. And they will do it like no other soldier on the globe, because that is who we are. The profession of arms demands much. Most of all, being a uniformed member of the military of the United States requires unmatched skills, but also a strong character, a honed intellect, an understanding that there are limits to what civilians ask us to do. When the orders we receive from a civilian authority pass legal, ethical or moral boundaries, any soldier of any rank has the right and the duty to first question those orders to receive clarification, and if necessary disobey them if they cross the line. That's what makes us different...

  But no matter who is the President, that person never has the authority to 'order' members of the Armed Forces to violate the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, their ethos, their oath or the international law of land combat.

  • Mark Hertling, "A soldier's view on Trump" (4 March 2016), CNN, State of Georgia: Cable News Network

• You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives–the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture...

  Your practical statesmanship which disdains to take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of the Revolution or of the Civil War as models, has looked in some cases to Spain for your example. I believe–nay, I know–that in general our officers and soldiers are humane. But in some cases they have carried on your warfare with a mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian cruelty...

  Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who thronged after your men when they landed on those islands with benediction and gratitude, into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries can not eradicate.

  • George Frisbie Hoar, Subjugation of the Philippines Iniquitous (May 1902)

• With regard to nuclear weapons, the situation is far more dangerous than the last Doomsday Clock report. New weapons systems under development are much more effectively dangerous. The Biden administration, expanding upon Trump’s confrontational approach, has Chomsky at a loss for words to describe the danger at hand. Only recently, Biden met with NATO leaders and instructed them to plan on two wars, China and Russia. According to Chomsky: “This is beyond insanity.” Not only that, the group is carrying out provocative acts when diplomacy is really needed. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation.
  • A World of Total Illusion and Fantasy: Noam Chomsky on the Future of the Planet, Robert Hunziker, CounterPunch (12 July 2021)

• There are almost 10,000 Americans serving in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen... These men and women are fighting alongside citizens of those countries.
  • Will Hurd, Statement on Immigration Ban (2017)

I

• With that in mind, the partners to the Treaty have pledged themselves to develop their individual and collective capacity - I repeat collective capacity - to resist armed attack. True to that pledge, every single member of the Alliance has spent progressively more money on defence each year since the Treaty was signed. Powerful American, Canadian and United Kingdom forces are already on the Continent, standing on guard alongside their European allies. But let there be no mistake about our purpose. The military strength at which we aim is the barest minimum for defence. Their neither is, nor ever will be, any margin whatsoever for aggression of any kind on our part. If it were otherwise, is it likely that a powerful peace-loving body like the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions would have solemnly pledged their determination - and here I quote - "to support the efforts of the free nations to strengthen their defences in order to stave off aggression."
  • Hastings Ismay, BBC Radio Talk, 13 September 1953

J

• A navy is essentially and necessarily aristocratic. True as may be the political principles for which we are now contending they can never be practically applied or even admitted on board ship, out of port, or off soundings. This may seem a hardship, but it is nevertheless the simplest of truths. Whilst the ships sent forth by the Congress may and must fight for the principles of human rights and republican freedom, the ships themselves must be ruled and commanded at sea under a system of absolute despotism.
  • John Paul Jones, letter to the Naval Committee of Congress (14 September 1775)

K

• Hell these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal and took Iwo Jima. Baghdad ain't shit.
  • John F. Kelly, as quoted in Marine General Speaks Out During the initial assault on Baghdad, Kelly responding to a reporter if he would ever consider defeat. (April 2007)

• I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of -- of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn’t know it yet but it’s created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped. As a veteran, and one who feels this anger, I’d like to talk about it. We’re angry because we feel we have been used in the worst fashion by the Administration of this country. In 1970 at West Point, Vice President Agnew said: "Some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedoms which those misfits abuse." And this was used as a rallying point for our effort in Vietnam. But for us, his boys in Asia whom the country was supposed to support, his statement is a terrible distortion from which we can only draw a very deep sense of revulsion; and hence the anger of some of the men who are here in Washington today. It’s a distortion because we in no way considered ourselves the best men of this country; because those he calls misfits were standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country dared to; because so many who have died would have returned to this country to join the misfits in their efforts to ask for an immediate withdrawal from South Vietnam; because so many of those best men have returned as quadriplegics and amputees, and they lie forgotten in Veterans Administration hospitals in this country which fly the flag which so many have chosen as their own personal symbol. And we cannot consider ourselves America’s best men when we were ashamed of and hated what we were called to do in Southeast Asia.
  • John Kerry, Statement Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered 22 April 1971, Washington, D.C.

• Conquer we must, when our cause it is just!
  • Francis Scott Key, "The Star-Spangled Banner" (1814)

• Engels once called the British army the most brutal army. During the Second World War, the German fascist army surpassed the barbarism of the British army. No human brain could ever imagine more diabolic and terrible cruelty then those done by the Hitler gangsters at that time. But in Korea, the Americans have far exceed the Hitlerites!
  • Kim Il-sung to the Swedish communist leader Frank Baude in 1993. Quote and translated fr Mot strömmen, pg. 186: "Engels kallade en gång den brittiska armén den mest brutala armén. Under andra världskriget överträffade den tyska fascistarmén brittiska armén i barbari. Ingen mänsklig hjärna kunde någonsin föreställa sig mer djävulska och förfärliga grymheter än dem som begicks av Hitler-skurkarna vid den tiden. Men i Korea har amerikanerna långt mer överträffat hitleristerna."

• I don’t think there was one state that wasn’t represented there. The experience helped me appreciate the variety of the country, in the people, the language, and culture. It is incredible to think that we are as diverse as we are and how we have held together as one culture. Really, it is the one clear fact of this country that makes it unique to the world.
  • Jack Kirby as qtd by Mark Peters in "8 Ways Comic Book Legend Jack Kirby Fought Fascism", Paste Magazine, (February 16, 2017).

• Some of the wars America fought were "simply for profit" and the sanctions it has imposed on certain countries have been as destructive as wars... The American people have virtually no say over when we go to war. These decisions are made in back rooms somewhere...The American people continue to be lied to about why we go to war, because again, one of the big reasons is simply for profit, and that's always been true to some extent, but now it is in a very naked way.
  • Daniel Kovalik quoted in Interview: Some American wars fought "simply for profit," sanctions also destructive, human rights lawyer says, Xinhua, December 8, 2021

• [On the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan] From a strategic point of view, it has to be seen as a complete failure, and yet it went on for 20 years, why did it go on for 20 years? Because the defense industry companies that make the bombs, that make the planes, that make the vehicles, and also the private military contractors that now are fighting the wars in lieu of public military personnel, they made trillions of dollars as long as the war continued. So they didn't care if the war was ever won, the goal was for the war to simply continue forever... the point is not to win the war, but to make sure it never ends because you're going to keep making profits.
  The U.S. is not advancing human rights through its military interventions. It's not advancing humanitarianism. In fact, it's undermining it in a huge way.
  • Daniel Kovalik quoted in Interview: Some American wars fought "simply for profit," sanctions also destructive, human rights lawyer says, Xinhua, December 8, 2021

• What army would you like to know is coming to liberate you? And it’s unanimous, everybody even the Nazis would again on a little airplane fly to the American lines and surrender at the Americans, even though that’s, everybody knows that we are exceptional in that sense.
  • Charles Krauthammer, interview with Bill Kristol (13 March 2015)

• The military told the commander in chief to go jump in a lake . Generally speaking, this is not a healthy state of affairs in a nation of civilian control. It does carry a whiff of insubordination. But under a president so uniquely impulsive and chronically irrational, a certain vigilance, even prickliness, on the part of the military is to be welcomed.
  • Charles Krauthammer, "The Guardrails Hold" (3 August 2017), The Washington Post

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You can cut up to 40 or 50 percent out of the Pentagon budget and still have strong national security... when you look at where people are on military policy and domestic policy — when it comes to making sure that these unauthorized wars, these forever wars, stop—the public is with us. ~ U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee

• Sixty years ago, at dawn on June 25, the Korean War broke out when Communist North Korea invaded the Republic of Korea. In response, 16 member countries of the United Nations, including the United States, joined with the Republic of Korea to defend freedom. Over the next three years of fighting, about 37,000 Americans lost their lives. They fought for the freedom of Koreans they did not even know, and thanks to their sacrifices, the peace and democracy of the republic were protected...

  On the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, I remain grateful to America for having participated in the war. At that time, the Republic of Korea was one of the most impoverished countries, with an annual per capita income of less than $40. In 2009, my country became a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee, the first aid recipient to become a donor and in only one generation.

  • Myung-bak Lee, "A Note of Thanks" (25 June 2010), The Los Angeles Times.

• We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town...

  Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — twenty percent of the population?

  • Curtis LeMay, Strategic Air Warfare: An Interview with Generals (1988).

• The participation in violent extremist activities of even a small number of individuals with military connections and military training could present a risk to the military and to the country as a whole.
  • Peter K. Levine; Joseph F. Adams; Amy A. Alrich; Rachel G. Augustine; Margaret D.M. Barber; Sujeeta B. Bhatt; Kathleen M. Conley; Dave I. Cotting; Alan B. Gelder; Jeffery M. Jaworski; Mark F. Kaye; Carrington A. Metts; Neil V. Mithal; Matthew J. Reed; "Prohibited Extremist Activities in the U.S. Department of Defense", Department of Defense, (December 2023); as quoted by Will Carless “After USA TODAY investigation, military finally releases internal extremism report”, USA Today, (Dec 26, 2023)

• DOD’s processes for awarding security clearances, assessing suitability, and granting access to facilities still focus to a significant extent on Cold War threats and threats related to the Global War on Terrorism rather than the threat of home-grown extremism.
  • Peter K. Levine; Joseph F. Adams; Amy A. Alrich; Rachel G. Augustine; Margaret D.M. Barber; Sujeeta B. Bhatt; Kathleen M. Conley; Dave I. Cotting; Alan B. Gelder; Jeffery M. Jaworski; Mark F. Kaye; Carrington A. Metts; Neil V. Mithal; Matthew J. Reed; "Prohibited Extremist Activities in the U.S. Department of Defense", Department of Defense, (December 2023); as quoted by Will Carless “After USA TODAY investigation, military finally releases internal extremism report”, USA Today, (Dec 26, 2023)

• The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint.
  • The Lieber Code of 1863, United States Department of War, 58

• Had I won the Nobel Peace Prize, what I would have done is awarded it to either the Bush administration for successfully disarming the nuclear program of North Korea and working diligently to do the same thing in Iran, or I would have awarded it to General Petraeus and the United States military. If there has ever been an engine for peace in the world, it is the United States military.
  • Rush Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh (12 October 2007).

• What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength our gallant and disciplined army? These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of those may be turned against our liberties, without making us weaker or stronger for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.
  • Abraham Lincoln's speech at Edwardsville, Illinois (11 September 1858); quoted in Lincoln, Abraham; Mario Matthew Cuomo, Harold Holzer, G. S. Boritt, Lincoln on Democracy (Fordham University Press, September 1, 2004), 128. ISBN 978-0823223459.
    • Variant of the above quote: What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy. These are not our reliance against tyranny. All of those may be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.
      • Fragment of Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, 13 September 1858; quoted in Lincoln, Abraham; The Writings of Abraham Lincoln V05) pp. 6-7

• It is worthy of note that while in this the Government's hour of trial large numbers of those in the Army and Navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have deserted his flag. Great honor is due to those officers who remained true despite the example of their treacherous associates; but the greatest honor and most important fact of all is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers and common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands but an hour before they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of plain people. They understand without an argument that the destroying the Government which was made by Washington means no good to them.
  • Abraham Lincoln, July 4th message to Congress (4 July 1861)

• Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
  • Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863)

• Soldiers. You are about to return to your homes and your friends, after having, as I learn, performed in camp a comparatively short term of duty in this great contest. I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country. I wish it might be more generally and universally understood what the country is now engaged in. We have, as all will agree, a free government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man.
  • Abraham Lincoln, speech to the One Hundred Sixty-fourth Ohio Regiment (18 August 1864), delivered at Washington, D.C.

• Every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by everyone. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed. I say this in order to impress upon you, if you are not already so impressed, that no small matter should divert us from our great purpose. There may be some irregularities in the practical application of our system. It is fair that each man shall pay taxes in exact proportion to the value of his property; but if we should wait before collecting a tax to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact proportion with every other man, we should never collect any tax at all. There may be mistakes made sometimes; things may be done wrong while the officers of the government do all they can to prevent mistakes. But I beg of you, as citizens of this great republic, not to let your minds to carried off from the great work we have before us. This struggle is too large for you to be diverted from it by any small matter. When you return to your homes rise up to the height of a generation of men worthy of a free Government, and we will carry out the great work we have commenced. I return to you my sincere thanks, soldiers, for the honor you have done me this afternoon.
  • Abraham Lincoln, speech to the One Hundred Sixty-fourth Ohio Regiment (18 August 1864), delivered at Washington, D.C.

• Military recruiters and top brass like to repeat the refrain that the average member of the armed forces is better educated than the average American. It's true. According to the Defense Department, nearly 94% of enlisted personnel have a high-school diploma, while only 60% of Americans do. About 83% of officers have a bachelor’s degree, in comparison with 30% of the general population.
  • Benjamin Luxenberg, "Military Officers Don’t Need College Degrees" (10 August 2015), Wall Street Journal

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[M]y duty and responsibility is to the Constitution, that's where my loyalty is. That's what I take an oath to. That's what every one of us in uniform does. We don't take an oath to an individual, we don't take an oath to anything other than the Constitution of the United States.
So our loyalty and our, you know — we are duty bound, we are oath bound — to protect and defend the Constitution. And part of that, by the way, is to follow the lawful legal orders of whomever is the elected representative, whether you like the orders or not. If they're legal and lawful, it's our obligation to follow them. And that's an important thing, we the military are obligated by law to follow lawful orders. ~ Mark Milley

I think that as a soldier and as a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, my primary responsibility is overseas and any-thing domestically is a matter of either domestic politics or domestic law enforcement unless deemed otherwise for a specific reason. ~ Mark Milley

• Your sons and daughters have served you well and faithfully with the calm, deliberated determined fighting spirit of the American soldier, based upon a tradition of historical truth as against the fanaticism of an enemy supported only by mythological fiction. Their spiritual strength and power has brought us through to victory. They are homeward bound; take care of them.
  • Douglas MacArthur, radio address (2 September 1945).

• I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again.
  • Douglas MacArthur, on landing in Leyte, Philippines (20 October 1944)

• The Puerto Ricans forming the ranks of the gallant 65th Infantry on the battlefields of Korea...

  are writing a brilliant record of achievement in battle and I am proud indeed to have them in this command. I wish that we might have many more like them.

  • Douglas MacArthur, Quoted on 12 February 1951 in Tokyo.

• I don't mean to sound sappy, but the thing that I feel most overwhelmingly is just how humbling it is to be alongside the American troops that are here. The American troops that are here, I believe from what I've seen them do, that they can do any military mission that is assigned to them, and I believe that whatever the U.S. military tries to do, even in those hard places in southern Afghanistan, they will do. But, you can also tell when you're here, that even if everything goes perfectly on the military side, that may very well do that, that will only determine about 20% of the variables that need to be determined in terms of the success of this war effort. It really is up to the Afghan people. Americans will clear that space, it is humbling to see them in action. They're working so hard and they're so good at it, but whether or not the Afghans step up is gonna be whether or not there's something that you can really think of as a victory here.
  • Rachel Maddow, "Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Deadline" (6 July 2010), Raw Story

• It is a settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.
  • James Madison, letter to Wolcott Chauncy and William Shaler, summarizing the Treaty of 1815, which ended the Second Barbary War and, with it, the practice of the U.S. government paying tribute to pirate states, as quoted in History and Present Condition of Tripoli: With Some Accounts of the Other Barbary States" by Robert Greenhow, published by T.W. White, 1835, page 46.

• From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli!
  We fight our country's battles in the air, on land, and sea!
  First to fight, for right and freedom!
  • Marines' Hymn

• America stand up. We love our military and we love our country but we fucking hate Trump.
  • Marshall B. Mathers, "The Storm" (October 2017)

Joshua L. Chamberlain: This is a different kind of army. If you look back through history, you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, because a king leads them or, or just because they like killing. But we are here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground - all of it. Not divided by a line between slave state and free, all the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here, we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here, you can be something. Here, is the place to build a home. But it's not the land. There's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value - you and me. What we're fighting for, in the end, we're fighting for each other.

• Gettysburg (1993), written by Ronald F. Maxwell

• The U.S. Armed Forces are a rock. This is the most competent and brilliantly led military in a tactical and operational sense that we have ever fielded. There is no reason why the U.S. cannot achieve our objectives.
  • Barry McCaffrey, as quoted in "The Bottom Line – Observations from Iraqi Freedom" (4 May 2006), Chaos Manor Special Reports

• We are Americans first, Americans last, Americans always. Let us argue our differences. But remember we are not enemies, but comrades in a war against a real enemy, and take courage from the knowledge that our military superiority is matched only by the superiority of our ideals, and our unconquerable love for them...

  We're Americans, and we'll never surrender. They will.

  • John McCain, Republican National Convention (30 August 2004)

• Make no mistake: I do not valorize our military out of some unfamiliar instinct. I grew up in a military family, and have my own record of service, and have stayed closely engaged with our armed forces throughout my public career. In the American system, the military has value only inasmuch as it protects and defends the liberties of the people.
  • John McCain, statement regarding Donald Trump's comments about Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004 (transcript by CNN)

• It is the policy of the Department of Defense to conduct all of its activities in a manner which is free from racial discrimination, and which provides equal opportunity for all uniformed members and all civilian employees irrespective of their color.
  • Robert McNamara, Directive 5120.36 (July 1963)

• African Americans have sought more to participate in America's wars than to abstain from them, and the strength of personal and military honor codes in African-American culture today remains a critical factor in assuring the continued strength of American military forces into the twenty-first century.
  • Walter Russell Mead, "The Jacksonian Tradition and American Foreign Policy" (December 1999), The National Interest, p. 15

• [T]he American military is a much more formidable machine than it used to be. Our weapons are much smarter and much more devastatingly effective, and our professional military has blossomed into the most effective force in the history of the human race. We can still be made to take casualties in asymmetrical combat situations, and no amount of military power can overcome the absence of strategy, but between the battlefield advantages our high tech weapons and new methods of training and combat planning have given us, the revolution in force projection, and the range of cultural, diplomatic, humanitarian and developmental capacities our military has acquired in the last twenty years, America’s unprecedented military power has changed the way the world works. This power is not a magic omnipotence pill; there are many things we cannot do. But the days when a third world tyrant could rely on conventional weapons to deter American intervention are gone. The U.S. military swatted Saddam’s army, rated as one of the world’s better forces, like so many flies in the first Gulf War, and by the time of the second our conventional superiority was even greater.
  • Walter Russell Mead, "Farewell To The Great Loon" (20 October 2011), The American Interest

• Offensive realism predicts that the United States will send its army across the Atlantic when there is a potential hegemon in Europe that the local great powers cannot contain by themselves.
  • John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001).

• Milley: Well, my duty and responsibility is to the Constitution, that's where my loyalty is. That's what I take an oath to. That's what every one of us in uniform does. We don't take an oath to an individual, we don't take an oath to anything other than the Constitution of the United States.
  So our loyalty and our, you know — we are duty bound, we are oath bound — to protect and defend the Constitution. And part of that, by the way, is to follow the lawful legal orders of whomever is the elected representative, whether you like the orders or not. If they're legal and lawful, it's our obligation to follow them. And that's an important thing, we the military are obligated by law to follow lawful orders.
  • Mark Milley as interviewed by Mary Louise Kelly, Erika Ryan Courtney Dorning; "'The military has no role' in politics, says retiring chair of the Joint Chiefs”, All Things Considered, NPR, (October 2, 2023)

• Kelly: [I have a question from] General Michael Hayden, retired Air Force four star general, former director of CIA, he wants to know: "Are we OK or not?" And I followed up with him because I wanted to make sure I understood his question. He told me, it's the United States, not China or Russia that poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security. General Milley, what do you think-

Milley: Look it, I think that as a soldier and as a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, my primary responsibility is overseas and anything domestically is a matter of either domestic politics or domestic law enforcement unless deemed otherwise for a specific reason.

• Mark Milley as interviewed by Mary Louise Kelly, Erika Ryan Courtney Dorning; "'The military has no role' in politics, says retiring chair of the Joint Chiefs”, All Things Considered, NPR, (October 2, 2023)

• Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.
  • Zell Miller, speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)

• I think that all eligible and qualified men and women should register for the draft.
  • Mark Milley, hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee (February 2016)

• Today, a major in the Army knows nothing but fighting terrorists and guerrillas, because he came into the Army after 9/11...

  But as we get into the higher-end threats, our skills have atrophied over 15 years.

  • Mark Milley, interview (2016)

• In the navy, you can sail the seven seas!
  In the navy, you can put your mind at ease!
  Come on now, people, make a stand! In the navy, in the navy.
  Can't you see, we need a hand?
  In the navy! Come on, protect the motherland. In the navy!
  • "In The Navy" (17 January 1979), written by Jacques Morali and Victor Willis, Go West (1979), Casablanca Records. Performed by the The Village People.

• Immediately after the war, American military debate centered on which service should achieve primacy as the defender of the nation. The Army Air Forces (created as an independent service, the USAF, on September 18, 1947) argued that its Strategic Air Command, equipped with B-29s and nuclear bombs, could defend the country. The navy responded the carrier air power had won the war and would continue to serve the nation best in the future. There was a sub-debate over who should have operational control over ground-based air defense units manning weapons in the United States, the Army or Air Force.
  The National Security Act was passed on July, 26, 1947, creating the "Armed Forces of the United states" and integrating the Army, Navy and Air Force under the Department of Defense. The intent, at least, on paper, was to foster better inter-service cooperation. In practice, inter-service squabbling continued. Effectively, tactical command of antiaircraft units in the United states was assigned to the Air Force, while the Army would be responsible for manning, training and equipping the units. All this was simply a matter of debate, as by 1949 there was only one Regular Army antiaircraft unit in active service; a training battalion at the Antiaircraft Artillery School at Fort Bliss, TX. Three events helped push the question of continental air defense to the forefront, and forced a decision on which service would supply what.
  • Mark L. Morgan, Mark A. Berhow, “Rings of Supersonic Steel: Air Defenses of the United States Army 1950-1979”, (2002), p.4.

• The Government Rules by Force, Fraud and Deception. The information blockade starts with the military itself. The military purposely restricts information plus its immense size and bureaucratic complexity means that it is so hard to grasp that political leaders cannot themselves understand the institution they are supposed to command.
  You want proof? Just try reading the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) 2016 report which could not figure out just how much oil the military burns. The GAO concluded: “[C]ongress does not have full visibility over the amount of fuel volume the military services require on an annual basis for their activities…”
  This should not come as a surprise. Since its inception in 1950 or so the modern military has resisted any accounting of costs in violation of Article I, Section 9, of the US Constitution. In 2018 the Pentagon failed its first ever audit. It’s not just about the missing 6.5 trillions dollars, (although that really matters too) it’s that the opaque accounting system is armor — a defensive weapon used to neutralize anyone that wants to understand, let alone oppose, the US government.
  • The Climate Counter-Offensive: Secrecy, Deception and Disarming the Green New Deal, Richard Moser, CounterPunch (June 14, 2019)

• This very big, very dirty secret — that war drives climate change — is carefully guarded. To keep things hush-hush the military is excused from oversight or obligation. This exception to the rule of law has always been the practice but G.W. Bush formalized it demanding language to that effect in the 1997 Kyoto Accords, which he later refused to sign anyway...The complete U.S. military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions calculations includes more than 1,000 U.S. bases in more than 130 countries around the world, it’s 6,000 facilities in the U.S., its aircraft carriers and jet aircraft. Also excluded are its weapons testing and all multilateral operations such as the giant U.S. commanded NATO military alliance and AFRICOM, the U.S. military alliance now blanketing Africa. The provision also exempts U.S./UN-sanctioned activities of “peacekeeping” and “humanitarian relief.”
  • Sara Flounders quoted in: The Climate Counter-Offensive: Secrecy, Deception and Disarming the Green New Deal, Richard Moser, CounterPunch (June 14, 2019)

• Every officer in the army who was dismissed fur cowardice or disloyalty, calls himself a Democrat.
  • Oliver Hazard Perry Morton, 14th Governor of Indiana, in a speech to the Union Mass Meeting at Masonic Hall, Indianapolis (20 June 1866): as contained in Treason Exposed: Record of the Disloyal Democracy (1866), Republican Party (Ind.) State Central Committee, p. 3

N

• You don't need to send American troops to Israel, we defend ourselves.
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, address to joint meeting of the U.S. Congress (24 May 2011)

• America still fields what is arguably the most disciplined, humane military force in history, a model of restraint compared with ancient armies that wallowed in the spoils of war or even more-modern armies that heedlessly killed civilians and prisoners.
  • Newsweek, MSNBC (12 June 2006)

• We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
  • Huey Newton, "Black Panther Party Platform, Program, and Rules" (1966), in The Huey P. Newton Reader, p. 56

• In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.... a legal officer flagged the strike as a possible war crime that required an investigation. But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike. The death toll was downplayed...Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. The Defense Department’s independent inspector general began an inquiry, but the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site... American-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. Civilian observers who came to the area of the strike the next day described finding piles of dead women and children.
  • How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria, By Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt New York Times, (13 November 2021)

O

• Wherever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening.
  • P. J. O'Rourke, Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism (2004).

• The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It's not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that's the path to ruin. Surveys show our standing around the world is high...

  When it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead; they call us...

  When you come after Americans, we go after you. It may take time, but we have long memories, and our reach has no limit.

  • Barack H. Obama II, State of the Union address (12 January 2016).

• And throughout this process, Michelle and I, we just have been your frontmen and women. We have been the face, sometimes the voice, out front on the TV screen or in front of the microphone, but this has never been about us. It has always been about you. And all the amazing things that happened over these last 10 years are really just a testament to you. In the same way that when we talk about our amazing military and our men and women in uniform, the military is not a thing. It's a group of committed patriots willing to sacrifice everything on our behalf. It works only because of the people in it. As cool as the hardware is, and we have cool hardware, as cool as the machines and weapons and satellites are, ultimately it comes down to remarkable people.
  • Barack Obama, Farewell to members of his staff on January 20, 2017 at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland before departing with his family for a vacation in California. Source: Obama's post-inauguration remarks: Full text by CNN on January 20, 2017.

P

• America is the most moral nation on earth, founded on moral principles, and we must apply moral principles when deciding to use military force.
  • Ron Paul, Speech before the U.S. House of Representatives (4 September 2002), Washington, D.C.

• I'm a Marine. I don't need to fly a little flag on my car to show I'm patriotic.
  • Josh Ray Person, as quoted in Generation Kill (2003), by Evan Wright, p. 68

• There's a great deal of criticism about the United States, but there is one thing that nobody criticizes the United States. Nobody thinks the United States went to strike against Iraq in order to gain land or water or oil, nobody thinks America has any ambitions about real estate. As it happened in the 20th century, the American boys went to fight in two world wars, many of them lost their lives. The United States won the wars, won the land, but you gave back every piece of it. America didn't keep anything out of her victories for herself. You gave back Japan, an improved Japan, you gave Germany, an improved Germany, you've heard the Marshall Plan. And today, I do not believe there is any serious person on earth who thinks the United States, whether you agree or don't agree with this strike, has any egoistic or material purposes in the war against Iraq. The reason is, for this strike, that you cannot let the world run wild. And people who are coming from different corners of our life, attack and kill women and children and innocent people, just out of the blue. And I think the whole world is lucky that there is a United States that has the will and the power to handle the new danger that has arrived on the 21st century.
  • Shimon Peres, speech (20 October 2004).

• There is no lack of bravery in the ranks of our armed forces, but bureaucratic cowardice rules in our intelligence establishment (as well as at the higher levels of military command).
  • Ralph Peters, Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World (2002), p. 196

• He did not say a monument to what, but he meant, I am sure, to leave it as a monument to the loyalty of our soldiers, who would bear all the horrors of Libby sooner than desert their flag and cause.
  • David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 299

• I love our flag, our Constitution and our country with a love that has no bounds. I defended all three for 35 years as a soldier and was willing to give my life in their defense.
  • Colin Powell, letter to Patrick Leahy (18 May 1999)

• Far from being the Great Satan, I would say that we are the Great Protector. We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated fascism. We defeated communism. We saved Europe in World War I and World War II. We were willing to do it, glad to do it. We went to Korea. We went to Vietnam. All in the interest of preserving the rights of people. And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, 'Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us'? No. What did we do? We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced totally to their soul. And did we ask for any land? No. The only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead, and that is the kind of nation we are.
  • Colin Powell, in MTV Global Discussion (14 February 2002)

• The ruling class, the billionaires who profit from human suffering, care only about expanding their wealth, controlling the world economy. ... Their power lies only in their ability to convince us that war, oppression and exploitation is in our interest. They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability to convince the working class to die to control the market of another country.
  • Veteran Michael Prysner, "Our Real Enemies," December 21, 2011

• I threw families]] onto the street in Iraq, only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country, in this tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis. We need to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land. They're not people whose names we don't know and cultures we don't understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable. The enemy is CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable. It's the insurance companies who deny us health care when it's profitable. It's the banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemies are not five thousand miles away. They are right here at home.
  • Veteran Michael Prysner, "Our Real Enemies," December 21, 2011

R

• The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor. We maintain our strength in order to deter and defend against aggression — to preserve freedom and peace.
  • Ronald Reagan, speech.

• It is extraordinary to see the confidence that many Americans place in their military’s ability. After 15 years the US has been unable to defeat a few lightly armed Taliban, and after 13 years the situation in Iraq remains out of control. This is not very reassuring for the prospect of taking on Russia, much less the strategic alliance between Russia and China. The US could not even defeat China, a Third World country at the time, in Korea 60 years ago. Americans need to pay attention to the fact that “their” government is... likely to bring vaporization to the United States and all of Europe. Russian weapons systems are far superior to American ones. American weapons are produced by private companies for the purpose of making vast profits. The capability of the weapons is not the main concern. There are endless cost overruns that raise the price of US weapons into outer space.
  • Paul Craig Roberts in Our Prospects Against the Russians & Chinese in WW3, Information Clearing House (28 May 2016)

• It is entirely possible that the world is being led to destruction by nothing more than the greed of the US military-security complex... the Obama regime has resurrected the Cold War, thus providing a more convincing “enemy” than the hoax terrorist one, the “Russian threat” has been restored to its 20th century role of providing a justification for bleeding the American taxpayer, social services, and the US economy dry in behalf of profits for armament manufacturers.... Washington’s rhetoric accompanying the revived Cold War is far more reckless and dangerous, as are Washington’s actions, than during the real Cold War.
  • Paul Craig Roberts in Our Prospects Against the Russians & Chinese in WW3, Information Clearing House (28 May 2016)

• All of America’s wars except the first—the war for independence — were wars for Empire. Keep that fact in mind as you hear the Memorial Day bloviations about the brave men and women who served our country in its times of peril. The United States has never been in peril, but Washington has delivered peril to numerous other countries in its pursuit of hegemony over others.
  • Paul Craig Roberts in Our Prospects Against the Russians & Chinese in WW3, Information Clearing House (28 May 2016)

• Today for the first time in its history the US faces peril as a result of Washington’s attempts to assert hegemony over Russia and China. Russia and China are not impressed by Washington’s arrogance, hubris, and stupidity. Moreover, these two countries are not the native American Plains Indians, who were starved into submission by the Union Army’s slaughter of the buffalo. An insouciant American population preoccupied with selfies and delusions of military prowess, while its crazed government picks a fight with Russia and China, has no future.
  • Paul Craig Roberts in Our Prospects Against the Russians & Chinese in WW3, Information Clearing House (28 May 2016)

• The leaders of our branches of military service have spoken immediately and forcefully, repudiating the implications of the president's words. Why? In part because the morale and commitment of our forces-made up and sustained by men and women of all races-could be in the balance.
  • Mitt Romney, Facebook statement (18 August 2017)
• It is hardly necessary to me to repeat that I believe in an efficient army and a navy large enough to secure for us abroad that respect which is the surest guaranty of peace. A word of special warning to my fellow citizens who are as progressive as I hope I am. I want them to keep up their interest in our international affairs; and I want them also continually to remember Uncle Sam’s interests abroad. Justice and fair dealings among nations rest upon principles identical with those which control justice and fair dealing among the individuals of which nations are composed, with the vital exception that each nation must do its own part in international police work. If you get into trouble here, you can call for the police; but if Uncle Sam gets into trouble, he has got to be his own policeman, and I want to see him strong enough to encourage the peaceful aspirations of other people’s in connection with us. I believe in national friendships and heartiest good-will to all nations; but national friendships, like those between men, must be founded on respect as well as on liking, on forbearance as well as upon trust. I should be heartily ashamed of any American who did not try to make the American government act as justly toward the other nations in international relations as he himself would act toward any individual in private relations. I should be heartily ashamed to see us wrong a weaker power, and I should hang my head forever if we tamely suffered wrong from a stronger power.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, Osawatomie speech, (August 31, 1910)

• The world is a safer and a better place when the United States is the strongest military power in the world.
  • Marco Rubio, as quoted in Marco Rubio and Rand Paul Clash (10 November 2015), by FoxNews Insider. Said during 2016 Republican Debate, Milwaukee.

S

• US military spending totaled $732 billion in 2019, nearly three times the $261 billion China spent. The US.. has around 800 overseas military bases, while China has just one (a small naval base in Djibouti). The US has many military bases close to China, which has none anywhere near the US. The US has 5,800 nuclear warheads; China has roughly 320. The US has 11 aircraft carriers; China has one. The US has launched many overseas wars in the past 40 years; China has launched none (though it has been criticized for border skirmishes, most recently with India, that stop short of war).
  • Jeffrey Sachs, America’s Unholy Crusade Against China, Project Syndicate, (5 August 2020)

• Attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman are unacceptable and must be fully investigated... but this incident must not be used as a pretext for a war with Iran, a war which would be an unmitigated disaster for the United States, Iran, the region, and the world... The time is now for the United States to exert international leadership,... and bring the countries in the region together to forge a diplomatic solution to the growing tensions... I would also remind President Trump that there is no congressional authorization for a war with Iran... A unilateral U.S. attack on Iran would be illegal and unconstitutional.
  • Bernie Sanders, Trump Must Not Be Allowed to Use Gulf of Oman Incidents as 'Pretext for Illegal War With Iran': Bernie Sanders, Common Dreams, Andrea Germanos, (14 June 2019)

• When it comes to national security policy, the U.S. has been on a steady, hypermilitarized arc for decades. Taken broadly, U.S. policy has been largely consistent on “national security” and “counterterrorism” matters from 9/11 to the present....
  There will be no major departures from the imperial course under Biden. While the drone wars continue, and the shift back to Cold War posturing in Europe and Asia accelerates, Biden will maintain the hostile stance toward left movements and governments throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. On climate change, Biden will reverse some of Trump’s most extreme stances, while still placing the profits of major corporations and the military industry over the health of the planet. The militarization of the borders and the maltreatment of refugees will remain, and the vast domestic surveillance apparatus will endure. The stark truth is this: The interests of the War Party trump any political disputes between the Democrats and the Republicans.
  • Jeremy Scahill, The War Party, From Bush to Obama, and Trump to Biden, U.S. Militarism Is the Great Unifier, The Intercept (November 21 2021)

• The Continental Army had reached a degree of integration it would not achieve again for another 200 years.
  • Robert A. Selig, "The Revolution's Black Soldiers", American Revolution

Nathaniel Fick: You want logistics? Join the Army. Marines make do.

• "Screwby" (2008), written by David Simon and Ed Burns, Generation Kill, Home Box Office

• Since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), the suicide rate for military personnel who have seen combat has increased to that of the general population (Kang & Bullman, 2008), and perhaps beyond.
  • Edward A. Selby, Michael D. Anestis, Theodore W. Bender, Jessica D. Ribeiro, Matthew K. Nock, M. David Rudd, Craig J. Bryan, Ingrid C. Lim, Monty T. Baker, Peter M. Gutierrez, and Thomas E. Joiner, Jr.; “Overcoming the Fear of Lethal Injury: Evaluating Suicidal Behavior in the Military through the Lens of the Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicide”, Clin Psychol Rev, 2010 Apr; 30(3): 298–307.

• [N]egroes must be encouraged to enlist as soldiers in the service of the United States, to contribute their share toward maintaining their own freedom, and securing their rights as citizens of the United States.
  • William Tecumseh Sherman, "Special Field Order No. 15" (16 January 1865), Headquarters Military Division of the Mississippi, In the Field, Savannah, Georgia

• Civilian Americans must understand that the greatest civil rights victories have been won by the Marines and the U.S. military, the most successfully integrated sector of our national life. Why? No racial reference and no racial discrimination. The first time I ever slept in the same quarters with African-Americans or Latinos — or took orders from them — was as a private in the Marines Corps. Yes, America really does need more Marine values and influence.
  • Mark Shields, "America Needs More Marine Corps Values" (2010), Creators.com

• I had a childhood fascination with the Army...

  The Sikh concept of standing up for the weak and defending the defenseless is very much at the core of the Sikh psyche, and those are same ideals that the U.S. Army upholds.

  • Simratpal Singh, as quoted in "Sikh Army captain allowed to wear beard and turban in uniform" (5 April 2016), by Nadeen Shaker, CNN, State of Georgia: Cable News Network

• Today's soldiers, and the democratic fallen, now occupy a prominent place in a long tradition of American liberators, extending from the American Revolution to Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. The Civil War was a touchstone in this legacy. Academic historians write that it was about sectionalism, or economics, or politics. These may have been its sources, but Abraham Lincoln knew what lay at its core, and stated as much in his Second Inaugural Address, before the conflict, slavery 'constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war'. Union soldiers fought to preserve the Union, but also to end human bondage.
  • Joseph M. Skelly, "The Democratic Fallen: Let us honor those who have defended our right to self-government with their last breaths" (18 May 2007), National Review Online

• It is as Americans that we express our concern with the growing confusion that threatens the security and stability of our country.
  • Margaret Chase Smith, Declaration of Conscience (1 June 1950)

T

• The story starts March 18, 2019, in a big Air Force combat operations center in Al Udeid in Qatar. And there we have, it almost looks like mission command for NASA. You have banks of computers, big screens, all of them watching the air war against the Islamic State... on this day, a lot of people in the command center are watching a drone that was flying up overhead. Now, what they saw was a field that was just littered with a tangle of cars and makeshift tents of debris of the leftovers from weeks of combat. But also within there was a lot of people. And the drone hovered over and focused in on a group of women and children who had found refuge down by the river against a steep sand bank. The drone, it lingered for several minutes, slowly circling with its cameras focused on these folks, either sleeping or just laying down low to take cover from whatever combat might be coming. And the people in the operation center were calmly watching this when, suddenly... an American F-15 attack jet came right through and dropped a large bomb dead center into this group of women and children... killing nearly all of them.
  • Dave Philipps quoted in How the U.S. Hid a Deadly Airstrike, by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times November 15th, 2021

• There are rules for when you can hit a target. And a lot of times, the people that decide whether those rules are being followed are in some command center somewhere. And they’re going to go through it, and they’re going to give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down. But there is a way that you can skip all of that oversight very quickly by saying that you’re under imminent threat, and you need to defend yourself. Under the law of war, that is always allowed. And that allowed the task force to skip all of the officers, all of the oversight, all of the lawyers that had rule books, and talk directly to the aircraft that were going to hit their target. And so, they could hit what they wanted to, essentially, with no one second guessing them....But what people in the operation center started seeing was that Task Force 9 seemed to be using this justification almost all of the time.
  • Dave Philipps quoted in How the U.S. Hid a Deadly Airstrike, by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times November 15th, 2021

• I think that there are people in the military that really want there to be accountability and have worked hard to try and ensure that there’s accountability. But the system that they’ve created is still so flawed that it doesn’t really tell us anything meaningful about how many civilians were actually killed. I mean, think about it. Here was a case where 70 people were killed. And they were killed in front of a high definition color drone camera that lots of military people saw. It was immediately reported, and then it was reported again and again. And the system was unable to respond in any logical way. I mean, if the system can’t handle something as obvious as that, what can it handle?
  • Quoted in How the U.S. Hid a Deadly Airstrike, by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times November 15th, 2021

• In my opinion, we must have an armed force sufficiently large to repel any attack which might be made. If the possible attackers in the future build up instruments of war which might be used against us, we must build faster. Can we permanently maintain our naval forces at their increased strength, and an army of seven hundred fifty thousand men, with 1, 250,000 reserves by voluntary enlistment, without compelling men to serve against their will? Surely, as a permanent policy, the question answers itself. It is only a question of making the service sufficiently attractive. We seem to be assuming that it is a sacrifice to go into the Army; that it is the most unpleasant occupation in the United States, and one which every boy instinctively avoids. That should be far from the case. In time of war the Army is dangerous; but if we prepare adequately we should not be at war, and the Army for the most part is a peacetime, highly specialized occupation, with only a chance of danger. Experience shows that men do not avoid an occupation because there is a chance of danger. There are dangerous civilian occupations—work with high-tension wires, work in tunnel construction, work in coal mines—and there is never any difficulty in finding men interested in those occupations. The Army has many advantages—a clean and regular life without responsibility, an attraction in the very discipline and order which appeals to some men and offends others very greatly. There are few occupations in which men could be induced to volunteer for $21 a month, and yet today we are enlisting, over twenty-five thousand men a month. In July we enlisted over thirty thousand. The voluntary-enlistment plan has not broken down. In spite of inadequate pay and three-year enlistments, it has accomplished everything which has been asked of it. Up to this time Congress has not even declared that a larger army is necessary. We can hardly blame the enlistment system for not providing an army which we have not actually authorized. No appeal has been made by the President for enlistment. Surely a general campaign led by the President, and organized on a voluntary basis throughout the United States, can secure even half a million men if that many should be necessary. There are many million men unemployed.
  • Robert A. Taft, as quoted in Stathis, S. W. 2009. Burke-Wadsworth Bill (Selective Training and Service Act of 1940) ∗ 1940 ∗. In: 2009. Landmark Debates in Congress: From the Declaration of Independence to the War in Iraq, Washington, DC: CQ Press. pp. 327-336
• To a foreigner, the United States’ military might is a defining national characteristic.
  • Jordan G. Teicher, "Everyday life as a JROTC cadet" (9 October 2015), The Washington Post

• The current strength of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are about 510,000 and 180,000 respectively. In addition, there are about 800,000 National Guard and Reserve troops available to the Army and Marine Corps. Though these numbers suggest the U.S. has bout 1.5 million total ground troops available, the U.S. has many commitments that limits strength for any single military event. Considering the needs for institutional support, U.S. commitments to Europe and Korea, and the rest, retraining, and re-equipping of forces, the U.S. probably has no more than 250,000 active duty troops available for a ground war. If the National Guard and Reserves were fully mobilized, then the U.S. could potentially put a million soldiers in the field for a campaign.
  • Bruce W. Terry, The Use of Land Power to Counter the Iranian Nuclear Proliferation Challenge (2007), Kansas: Fort Leavenworth

• The Continental Army exhibited a degree of integration not reached by the American army again for 200 years, until after World War II.
  • Mary V. Thompson, "The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret", Mount Vernon

• It is always the job of American soldiers to protect civilians before protecting themselves. In doing so they protect themselves better than if they did not. It may be counter-intuitive, but it’s straight-forward, by-the-book.
  • Michael Totten, "Anbar Awakens: Part I" (September 2007), World Affairs Journal

• There shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.
  • Harry S. Truman, Executive Order 9981 (26 July 1948)

• We have achieved a world leadership which does not depend solely upon our military and naval might.
  • Harry S. Truman, address before a joint session of the U.S. Congress (16 April 1945)
• America's men and women in uniform have given their lives in the fight against Nazism, imperialism, communism, and terrorism. America does not seek conflict or confrontation, but we will never run from it. History is filled with discarded regimes that have foolishly tested America's resolve. Anyone who doubts the strength or determination of the United States should look to our past, and you will doubt it no longer. We will not permit America or our allies to be blackmailed or attacked. We will not allow American cities to be threatened with destruction. We will not be intimidated. And we will not let the worst atrocities in history be repeated here on this ground we fought and died so hard to secure.
  • Donald Trump, Remarks to the National Assembly of South Korea in Seoul, South Korea; (8 November 2017)

• By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy … Yet, the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements … Any talk of climate change which does not include the military is nothing but hot air... It’s a loophole [in the Kyoto Convention on Climate Change] big enough to drive a tank through, according to the report ” A Climate of War.” In 1940, the US military consumed one percent of the country’s total energy usage; by the end of World War II, the military’s share rose to 29 percent....Militarism is the most oil-exhaustive activity on the planet, growing more so with faster, bigger, more fuel-guzzling planes, tanks and naval vessels employed in more intensive air and ground wars. At the outset of the Iraq war in March 2003, the Army estimated it would need more than 40 million gallons of gasoline for three weeks of combat, exceeding the total quantity used by all Allied forces in the four years of World War 1. Among the Army’s armamentarium were 2,000 staunch M-1 Abrams tanks fired up for the war and burning 250 gallons of fuel per hour.
  • The Military Assault on Global Climate, by H Patricia Hynes, Truthout, September 8, 2011

• The US Air Force (USAF) is the single largest consumer of jet fuel in the world... the F-4 Phantom Fighter burns more than 1,600 gallons of jet fuel per hour and peaks at 14,400 gallons per hour at supersonic speeds. The B-52 Stratocruiser, with eight jet engines, guzzles 55 gallons per minute... A quarter of the world’s jet fuel feeds the USAF fleet of flying killing machines; in 2006, they consumed... an astounding 2.6 billion gallons.
  • The Military Assault on Global Climate, by H Patricia Hynes, Truthout, September 8, 2011

• The (US) military reports no climate change emissions to any national or international body, thanks to US arm-twisting during the 1997 negotiations of the first international accord to limit global warming emissions, the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. To protect the military from any curbs on their activities, the United States demanded and won exemption from emission limits on “bunker” fuels (dense, heavy fuel oil for naval vessels) and all greenhouse gas emissions from military operations worldwide, including wars. Adding insult to injury, George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol as one of the first acts of his presidency, alleging it would straitjacket the US economy with too costly greenhouse emissions controls. Next, the White House began a neo-Luddite campaign against the science of climate change. In researching “The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism,”... getting war casualty statistics out of the Department of Defense (DoD) is easier than getting fuel usage data.
  • The Military Assault on Global Climate, by H Patricia Hynes, Truthout, September 8, 2011

V

• To the extent that Americans think about these bases at all, we generally assume they’re essential to national security and global peace. Our leaders have claimed as much since most of them were established during World War II and the early days of the Cold War. As a result, we consider the situation normal and accept that US military installations exist in staggering numbers in other countries, on other peoples’ land. On the other hand, the idea that there would be foreign bases on US soil is unthinkable.
  While there are no freestanding foreign bases permanently located in the United States, there are now around 800 US bases in foreign countries. Seventy years after World War II and 62 years after the Korean War, there are still 174 US “base sites” in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea, according to the Pentagon. Hundreds more dot the planet in around 80 countries, including Aruba and Australia, Bahrain and Bulgaria, Colombia, Kenya, and Qatar, among many other places. Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.
  • David Vine, “The United States Probably Has More Foreign Military Bases Than Any Other People, Nation, or Empire in History”, The Nation, (September 14, 2015).

W

• In both gulf wars, the U.S. military has performed with incredible skill and discipline, and America has learned that the My Lais of Vietnam were the exception, not the rule.
  • Sam Williamson, "A Skewed View of Life in the Marines: A Review of Anthony Swofford's Jarhead" (18 April 2003)

• It's amazing, when we came together...

  When we put our differences aside and we declared war on the people that harmed us...

  When we got together to help the people and the families of the people that died...

  It made me feel amazing. It made me feel patriotic, it made me feel strong, it made me love this country in a way that in all my years I'd never really loved it. You know? Because that's the America we all dream of. That's the America that we all want, this America that's strong, and powerful and strikes back when necessary. The sleeping giant that we were taught about in our history books, ready to just to just be the super-power that we need to be and having the best army in the world and wow. Wow. A congress and a president that'll work together, and what have we become? Eleven years later? Eleven years later we don't have those answers that we wanted...

  We have most. We know who did it, we know why they did it. We know how they did it. There's conspiracy theories abound; the proof is pretty much there. But, we've done so much to gut ourselves. We've done so much to gut our freedoms...

  At the end of the day, the America that we could have been had we stayed on that path, the America that we could have been had we stayed together, had we worked hard to rebuild, to be better to be stronger, is a dream again. You know, and that's really sad...

  We're more divided than we've ever been, and that? That breaks my heart...

  You? If you're under the age of eighteen, you've never lived in an America like ours. You know? You've lived in a good country, don't get me wrong. You've lived in a fantastic country, one that's ailing right now, there's no arguing that. But, so close and yet? So far...

  I remember that American dream, and I just wonder. I wonder if America can ever be the same again. We'll see.

  • Steven Williams, "Story Time With Boogie: September 11th, 2001" (September 2012), YouTube

• I am grateful to the men and women of our military for their service, but armies are only expedients, necessary evils. They should be kept out of sight for the same reason I keep the guns out of sight in my home. A military parade does not display greatness—it displays power. And that may be where I most part company with our new nationalists. To my eye, there is more American greatness in a New England town hall than in all of Washington, and more American greatness in an Oregon apple orchard or a Rotary meeting than there is in all the tanks and rockets that ever have been.
  • Kevin D. Williamson, "The Nationalism Show" (March 2019), National Review

• Republicanism did not die away. They remain to temper the scramble for private wealth and happiness and they continue to underlie for many of our ideals and aspirations: for our belief in equality and our dislike of pretension and privilege; our deep yearning for individual autonomy and freedom from all ties of dependency; our periodic hopes, expressed, for example, in the election of military heroes.
  • Gordon Wood, "Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution" (April 1990), Chicago-Kent Law Review

Z

• [The Taliban are] committed to the contents of the agreement and hope for good and positive relations with all countries, including the U.S, in the future.
  • Zabihullah Mujahed, spokesman for the Taliban according to Taliban welcomes Trump’s tweet on early troop withdrawal from Afghanistan published October 8, 2020

• Realization of the strategic plans for future aggression is connected with the desire to utilize to the utmost the war production facilities of the United States, which had grown to enormous proportions by the end of World War II. American imperialism is persistently pursuing a policy of militarizing the country. Expenditure on the US army and navy exceeds 11,000 million dollars per annum. In 1947-48, 35 per cent of America’s budget was appropriated for the armed forces, or eleven times more than in 1937-1938. On the outbreak of World War II the American army was the seventeenth largest in the capitalist world; today it is the largest one. The United States is not only accumulating stocks of atomic bombs; American strategists say quite openly that it is preparing bacteriological weapons. The strategic plans of the United States envisage the creation in peacetime of numerous bases and vantage grounds situated at great distances from the American continent and designed to be used for aggressive purposes against the USSR and the countries of the new democracy. America has built, or is building, air and naval bases in Alaska, Japan, Italy, South Korea, China, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Austria, and Western Germany. There are American military missions in Afghanistan and even in Nepal. Feverish preparations are being made to use the Arctic for purposes of military aggression.
  • Andrei Zhdanov, "New Aspects of World Conflict: The International Situation," September 22, 1947