top of page
Exlpore more War quotes

"Why have we built warships to bring home peace?"

"Fire supposed he needed to be there in order to give rousing speeches and lead the charge into the fray, or whatever is was commanders did in wartime. She resented his competence at something so tragic and senseless. She wished he, or somebody, would throw down his sword and say, 'Enough! This is a silly way to decide who's in charge!' And it seemed to her, as the beds in the healing room filled and emptied and filled, that these battles didn't leave much to be in charge of. The kingdom was already broken, and this war was tearing the broken pieces smaller."

"I have a scheme for stopping war. It's this - no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one."
Explore more quotes by William Odom

"In fact, it struck me when we invaded last year that if we did it without European and East Asian support, we were risking losing our alliance in Europe in exchange for Iraq, and that is a very undesirable exchange."

"I will make a general statement that we have not had anything like the policy of holding people in high office responsible for their acts that I think we should."

"The whole notion of land property rights in the Arab world is different from that in Europe."

"I don't think that the war serves U.S. interests. I think Osama bin Laden's interests and the Iranian interests are very much served by it, and it's becoming a huge drain on our resources both material and political."

"While people out there on the spot certainly have to be held accountable for what they've done personally, the chain of command responsibility for this strikes me as just as important and should be dealt with."

"Second, recent polls over there show that the majority of Iraqis want us to leave precipitously."

"Military officers from different countries, when they meet each other, tend to sort of fall in love, become mutual admiration societies, at the expense of realities."

"So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind."
bottom of page