The only problem they had ... was in drawing the fine differences between war-mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss-mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence-mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit.

Richard K. Morgan
About This Quote

The only problem they had ... was in drawing the fine differences between war-mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss-mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence-mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit. Neil Sheehan, reporting for The New York Times in Vietnam in 1972, wrote about what he saw in Vietnam in the same week that the United States launched its invasion of Cambodia. He said: “They were apparently confused by the fine distinctions between war-mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss-mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence-mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit.”

Source: Altered Carbon

Some Similar Quotes
  1. War is what happens when language fails. - Margaret Atwood
  2. Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. - Ernest Hemingway
  3. The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them. - J.r.r. Tolkien
  4. If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war. - Leo Tolstoy
  5. Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows. - Anonymous
More Quotes By Richard K. Morgan
  1. A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one.
  2. The only problem they had ... was in drawing the fine differences between war-mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss-mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence-mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit.
  3. Like Bancroft, MacIntyre had been a man of power, and like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing. Someone else was paying.
  4. It has been a messy week, and I blame myself as much as anyone else. I feel like a behaviourist who has designed her rat’s maze poorly.
  5. Potential, and the will to deploy it. That's all magic is in the end, you know.
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