Quote

War means fighting, and fighting means killing.

War is an arena for the display of courage and virtue. Or war is politics by other means. War is a quasi-mystical experience where you get in touch with the real. There are millions of narratives we impose to try to make sense of war.

War is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.

War is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It's good to know what war entails and what the human sacrifice is.

To be sure, those who are actually engaged in combat - those who actually see the maimed bodies and mourning mothers - struggle more than the rest of us to make sense of the reality of war.

For a long time, it was believed that war was waged by armies which could not be identified with the nation itself. Professional soldiers took upon themselves the job of defending national interests, and it was understood that the war affected only them; the country itself went on living and working.

When we think of war, the tendency is to picture young soldiers only in their military roles. To a large extent this dehumanizes the soldiers and makes it easier for society to commit them to combat.

War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults.

In war, people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and in those circumstances, they act in extraordinary ways. In war, you see people at their very best and their very worst, acting in ways you could never imagine. War is human drama at its most epic and most intense.