Todd > Todd's Quotes

“Producing a high body count was crucial for promotion in the officer corps. Many high-level officers established “production quotas” for their units, and systems of “debit” and “credit” to calculate exactly how efficiently subordinate units and middle-management personnel performed. Different formulas were used, but the commitment to war as a rational production process was common to all.11”
― Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

“In Vietnam, the statistically minded war managers focused, above all, on the notion of achieving a “crossover point”: the moment when American soldiers would be killing more enemies than their Vietnamese opponents could replace.”
― Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

“The true purpose of the various directives, regulations, and pocket-sized codes of conduct handed out to troops was not to implement genuine safeguards for noncombatants, but to give the military a paper trail of plausible deniability.”
― Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

“People from one side of the border most proudly kill people from the other side of the border and they call it patriotism. If this is patriotism, then I'd rather be the most unpatriotic person on earth, than be a savage patriot with no more brains in the skull than a neanderthal. Whom are you fighting, who are your enemies, and on whose orders are you fighting them, and how much sure are you that the superiors and their political authorities who are giving you all those commands, are actually even capable of making decisions on matters of peace and progress! Being a politician, doesn't mean being capable of making the best decisions for a people. So, if you keep following their commands like blind dogs in the hope of some miserable medals, then they'll rip this world apart into pieces and you are going to be the ammunition in that deed. You are born a human, so act like one, not for god’s sake, but for your children’s sake.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Citizens of Peace: Beyond the Savagery of Sovereignty

“If you want to end a war, don't wait for the orders to come in - stand up and demand from the government to focus on peace and not on war, and if they ignore you, which they most likely would, then forget their intervention and go over to the other side yourself as a vulnerable and unarmed citizen of not a nation, but of peace. And when one side of the border has a handful of such citizens of peace, then the other side is bound to reciprocate that peace.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Citizens of Peace: Beyond the Savagery of Sovereignty

“I will soothe you and heal you,
I will bring you roses.
I too have been covered with thorns.”
― Rumi

“You don’t have to act crazy anymore—
We all know you were good at that,

Now retire, my dear,
From all that hard work you do

Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart.

Look in a clear mountain mirror
See the beautiful ancient warrior
And the divine elements
You always carry inside

That infused this universe with sacred life
So long ago”
― Hafiz, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy

“But unlike those mornings at Abu Ghraib when I avoided prayer in order to ignore my own failures, I avoid it now because I have a debt to pay, and I have no right to petition someone else to pay it. I am a torturer. I”
― Eric Fair, Consequence: A Memoir

“It is also said that Genghis Khan wanted to attack the kingdom of Prester John, but that the latter repulsed him by unleashing thunderbolts against his armies.”
― René Guénon