“War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.”

Preface (page XIX)
The Great War for Civilization (2005)

Majority Report, July 22, 2005 broadcast
Majority Report
Context: You know George W. Bush is a war-time president, he says - proudly. Guess what. War is failure! When you are at war, you have failed! When you have gone to a war of choice and lied about it, you're a double-triple, triple-quadruple failure! Or a warlord. It's called a warlord in other countries. A war time president here. One man's ceiling I guess is another man's floor. George Bush is a warlord. He's a failure!

Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in realizing the mortal danger; too late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance, too late in standing with one's friends. Victory in war results from no mysterious alchemy or wizardry but depends entirely upon the concentration of superior force at the critical points of combat.

Statement MacArthur made in 1940, as quoted by James B. Reston in Prelude to Victory (1942), p. 64
1940s

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 31.

on Persian Gulf War
Chicago '91 (1991)

"Of Their Choosing" http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/09/of-their-choosi.html, The Daily Dish (20 September 2007)

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)
Context: War isn't civilized. War is failure. It's the ultimate result of a breakdown in public policy, and soldiers are the machines that handle that breakdown. In warfare, you're taught to do whatever you have to, to stay alive.