The Kill Switch Quotes

“Pete Kilner, of West Point’s Center for the Advancement of Leader Development and Organizational Learning, recalls a company commander in Iraq telling him why he’d stayed very strict about the rules of engagement in the war’s very worst days. “The guys hate me now,” Kilner recounts him saying, “but they’re going to thank me for the rest of their lives. I saw what happened in 2003. The guys who were out there being the mad killers everyone thought were so cool, they came back, they drank and beat their wives. They divorced and killed themselves. I’m not going to let my guys do that.”
― Phil Zabriskie, The Kill Switch

“It was because he was “a supremely unconfident guy,” he said, that he felt a need to push himself to compensate.”
― Phil Zabriskie, The Kill Switch

“That letter took hours,” he says, but he did it, and he found that he was able not only to forgive the man but also, to an extent, identify with him. “I forgive him because it was war,” Nelson says. “We were both out to do the same thing, basically. And I had done the same thing to other Iraqis. Maybe I killed his brother, I don’t know. But I killed some people on that side, so I know that some families had to be affected, and I hope and pray that they come to the same place I have and forgive me for what I have done.” The bomber, “He got the best of us that day. We both went out to do our jobs. And if I had done like I had done on several other occasions, I [would have] killed them. How can I sit there and belittle him when he’s going out with the same intent I am?”
― Phil Zabriskie, The Kill Switch