Rather than a normal post about the breaking news, to honor Memorial Day and those that have died in service to America and freedom, I want to comment on a number of quotes about war:

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. " George Orwell

For all those who think ending war is the best of all possible outcomes.

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. Carl Sandburg

And if that war is in the fight for freedom, this is a tragedy beyond all comprehension.

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it. Robert E. Lee

Amen.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. Jeannette Rankin

I will let Demosthenes answer.

Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master. Demosthenes

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with. Lois McMaster Bujold.

Talking about war without talking about its purpose and goal is meaningless.

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children. Herodotus

This makes the cost of war all the higher.

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. John F. Kennedy

But does this mean that there are no freedom, no justice, no ideal worth dying for?

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Sir Winston Churchill

For those fools that think the problems in war arise from lack of planning or leadership.

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man. Lord William Beveridge

Men do not fight and die to glorify rulers but for their families and the children's future.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. Jimmy Carter

Isn't bearing the necessary burden and making a necessary sacrifice the greatest good?

Either war is obsolete or men are. R. Buckminster Fuller

Hasn't this been pretty much proven wrong?

In war there is no substitute for victory. General Douglas MacArthur

And there is no need to apologize for it.

Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but the capacity to prevent it. Anne O'Hare McCormick

And as long there are those who are not deterred from using war as the path to power, war is necessary.

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith. John Foster Dulles

And as long as evil people harness idealism, self-sacrifice, and faith as a path to personal power, war must continue.

War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies. Colton

And such is the foundation of human progress.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. Oscar Wilde

Spoken like a true elitist.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. John Stuart Mill

The great men have said it much better than I can. Too bad their wisdom is no longer taught.

War is just to those to whom war is necessary. Titus Livius

There is that word "necessary" again, but from a time when people knew what it meant.

But in modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason. Ernest Hemingway

And this was written about WWII, the war that destoyed Hitler.

To my mind to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder. Albert Einstein

This from a man who fled Hitler before the real killing had begun.

It cost about 75 cents to kill a man in Ceasar's time. The price rose to about $3,000 per man during the Napoleonic wars; to $5,000 in the American Civil War; and then to $21,000 per man in World War I. Estimates for the future wars indicate that it may cost the warring countries not less than $50,000 for each man killed. Senator Homer T. Bone

And this is a good thing, right? Spoken like a true Democrat, but I am confused.

War like any other racket, pays high dividends to the very few. The cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not profit. General Smedley Butler

Unless, of course, you count among those who have gotten "high dividends" all those people on earth who are free today.